Here’s the audio recording of the SPGB debate with an Anarcho-Capitalist
Hosted online by ‘Blue Politics’ on Discord
Monday 24th August 2020
Bill Martin (SPGB) and Keith Knight (an anarcho-capitalist YouTuber)
A Way Forward
Sanders sought an image of himself more as a vehicle for new left-wing politics as his motivation. No such movement materialized, however. The Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, is the Party of Capital. Bernie Sanders said he used the Democratic Party to get media coverage for standing for president as he saw what happened to Ralph Nader in the past and how today the Green Party is side-lined by the media. Those supporting Sanders no matter what party he is in will now ponder where their support will now go.
Biden is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He has been saying that he is a progressive for political expediency. Biden’s political record is not one of someone who throws himself into passionate causes for social justice and human rights. Facing threats from climate change, he supports moderate regulation. He supported legislation for a border fence in 2006. She supported regime change in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, and the impact of such policies has been catastrophic. Biden has taken money from lobbyists. She supports maintaining the death penalty. He supported bailing out Wall Street.He also clings to the Affordable Care Act, which represented a windfall for health insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as an adequate substitute for a Medicare for All system. Biden’s track record goes against everything Sanders’ activists have fought for. The mainstream corporate media endorses his “pragmatic” (lower your expectations) message that minimizes the ongoing crisis felt by the millions left behind without health care, unemployed or stuck in low-paying jobs, facing mountains of student debt, and all the other pervasive disparities.
A powerful socialist party should be the conduit for change. Mass protests and shut-downs have often been aimed at the wrong target. Many are able to see through the ideological mystification of American politics. The Republicans are deeply divided with Trump anti-Republican on many issues. He is a protectionist – believes in tariffs and other restrictions, which spits in the face of the Republican free-trader. At the same time, he goes over the top with the racism, sexism, and bigotry fostered and used by the Republicans over the past few decades. And he has a lot of support particularly among white lower-income men and women, but not limited to the
Meanwhile, the Democrats are also seriously divided. A great deal of the party base, young people in particular, seek change, while the Establishment want the status quo. Biden’s claim to support but even here it may be eroding. There’s a lot of talk, a lot of people who say they would not vote for Biden under any conditions…
Bernie’s main point is that the policies of BOTH the Republicans and the Democrats, with all the “free trade” agreements and favorable treatment of the rich banks and corporations – policies that have just served to make rich people richer and put more Americans in deep trouble
In other words, the common thread for both Sanders and Trump supporters is the deep anger and frustration of people in the country.
The main difference seems to be that the pro-Trump supporters seem to blame immigrants, people of color, Muslims, “uppity” women, foreign countries such as China. While the pro-Sanders progressives blame rich and the politicians they have bought.
It is clear that Joe Biden is not as progressive he claims to be and that he has consistently supported the agenda of corporations. Socialists are “progressives”. We are not anti-development. We want development, but not at any cost. We want that every person should get equal education and healthy life. We want dirty rivers and lakes to be pollution free. We want wastelands turned green. We want that everyone should get clean air and wholesome food. Technology should work in harmony and cooperation with nature. This is our model of development. Socialists seek to build unity for without unity, we cannot fight and we need to learn from struggles of others.
Unlike much of the Left, the World Socialist Party of the United State (WSPUS) has opposed the traditional radical opposition to the incumbent presidents (e.g., anti-Nixon, anti-Reagan, anti-Bushes or anti-Clinton, anti-Obama and anti-Trump) arguing that the enemy of the working class is the entire exploitative social system based on ownership of the means of the production, not the presidents elected to run that system, as such opposition fosters the illusion of “better presidents” rather than an understanding of, and opposition to, the entire economic system based on an owning minority employing a non-owning majority to produce its profits. The fact is that the president serves at the pleasure of the U.S. ruling class. Nevertheless it has not shied away from exposing their lies and hypocrisy.
The problem is not the billionaires but instead the ownership of the means of production by the capitalist ruling class. And the problem is not “greed,” but instead the way the capitalist system works, to channel all productive efforts into the creation of surplus value, called “profit” by capitalists. One of Marx’s great discoveries is that this process is guided by the social relations (including the property relations) that are the heart of capital, and not by the subjective desires, avaricious or otherwise, of individual capitalists. In other words, the problem is capitalism, not greed. The solution is to create a real break with capitalism. Marx demonstrated that the subjectivities of capitalists–and everyone else–are rooted in social processes, though nothing deterministic can be said about this. Perhaps some capitalists are “nice, caring people,” or whatever. On the other hand, in what they participate in, capitalists are indeed bad people to a one, so let it not go without saying. They need to be dealt with, as part of breaking with capitalism.
We are up against the compulsion of the U.S. capitalist ruling class to compete in a vast global market with no ethical concerns whatsoever, other than profit accumulation “by any means necessary.” In attempting to extend the welfare state with relatively mild reforms, or in the case of at least trying to make corporations and capitalists simply pay taxes at the low rate they are already charged, the odds are stacked against workers.
America is divided into two distinct and opposing camps, the one side having little to say for itself other than that it owns everything and that it will use every means in its disposal to hold on to the ownership of everything. On the other side we can only hope that people will begin to question and challenge this “ownership,” and how it could conceivably be that a relative handful of people own everything and exert tremendous control over the lives of billions. The job of socialists is to provide such critical tools and terms necessary for dissecting this situation.
Arsenic or Strychnine? Choose your poison
The two Bernie Sanders campaigns has demonstrated the potential to rally millions to a progressive social-democratic agenda. Sanders even called his campaign “socialist,” a term which is no longer anathema to many younger Americans, although to characterize Sanders as a socialist is less than accurate, he is more a FDR New Dealer, but which nonetheless compared to the corporate Democrats makes Sanders appear as a revolutionary fire-brand. But he is decidedly not, for the simple reason that his political vision is about reforming capitalism, not abolishing it.
Support for Sanders exposed just how profoundly undemocratic the Democratic Party actually is. Sanders campaign debates has also exposed just how conservative Joe Biden actually is. For many voters the Sanders’ challenge has brought into sharper public focus what a Wall Street sycophant Biden remains. The Sandernistas nevertheless will vote for the “lesser evil” Biden over Trump in November. This was never ever a problem for Sanders who often stated he would support the Democratic Party candidate for president. It does, however, pose a difficulty for his supporters who endorsed his platform, one very different from Biden’s proposals.
For sure, Trump’s “populism” is just pure demagoguery, a bogus prescription for the ills of capitalism sold by a racist and ultra-nationalist—a billionaire capitalist—who trades in scapegoating and fear-mongering of the proverbial “other” to promote himself as a political savior. But Trump is really only a little less vulgar politically than Biden. Does it matter that he supported the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq? Does it matter that he supported global assassinations by drone as an instrument of foreign policy? Does it matter he has stood as an unabashed apologist for Israel’s repeated aggression against the Palestinians? Does anyone seriously believe Joe Biden will do anything to challenge this growing economic divide, the increasing concentration of financial wealth in the hands of a very few?
For those galvanized Sanders supporters, how will the spirit of activism for social and economic justice be sustained after their candidate endorsed a conservative Democrat, another cheer-leader for Wall Street and the global American empire, for president? The idea that the Democratic Party can be transformed from an instrument of Wall Street into a party that fights the class war for the cause of the working people of America is a delusion.
American nationalism is not a harmless pageant but national triumphalism. In most countries the national anthem is played only at international events, not at domestic games. Saluting the flag and making a pledge of allegiance to one’s nation in schools are practices usually reserved for dictatorships. What is American “exceptionalism” that places it above and outside accepted international law? Donald Trump, has promised to deport every last one of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States, the whole lot of them, while as a bonus banning Muslims from the country.
How did Trump get really rich? His answer is in his book “The Art of the Deal.” Our answer is much simpler. Trump’s father, Fred. Donald Trump went from rich to even richer, which is very much more easily accomplished than rags to riches.
Trump’s father found a government program that provided funds for private builders to build housing for lower and middle-income people. Trump Snr. got a loan of $10.3 million from the Federal Housing Administration and then built the required houses, Shore Haven Apartments, for about $1 million less than that. Fred Trump had found a cash cow, and a way to milk it, and he kept on milking it until he was one of the biggest landlords in New York’s outer boroughs.
Donald Trump initially intended to follow in dad’s footsteps and go big on the housing loan program, constructing low- and middle-income housing in Manhattan. Unfortunately for Trump New York City canceled the program in 1975 – just as he was about to get his hands on the udder teats.
Where Trump did shine was in his Manhattan real estate investments. But here again, the key wasn’t deals. In this case, he inherited control and eventually one-quarter ownership of a family organization worth about $200 million in 1974, and invested heavily in Manhattan. Back in 1974, $200 million was worth something: close to $800 million in today’s money. Manhattan real estate took off in a spectacular fashion – average land prices went up by well over 6,000% between 1973 and the present day. That means Trump could have bought pieces of Manhattan real estate at random – and at fair market prices without bothering to negotiate – and still achieved those returns. To this day, despite all of his other business ventures, New York real estate makes up about 60% of the value of his personal portfolio. For sure had Trump bet his millions of dollars in capital on a property recovery in Detroit, his life story would have been rather different.
Backing Joe Biden — no matter how hard you hold your nose — will not do: Voting for Biden solidifies the notion that no matter how regressive a figure the Democratic Party nominates, progressives and others will vote for them. This mindset turns voters into robots. While Biden stresses what he allegedly shares a lot in common with Sanders, he is entrenched with the establishment with ties to Wall Street, corporate power and hawkish U.S. foreign policy. There is every indication that a Biden presidency would be a major boost to corporate and Wall Street control over the U.S. and the world — as well as a major boost to perpetual U.S. wars into the coming decades with quite certain devastating results.
Voters need to have “somewhere to go” or they will continue to be a play–thing of the elites like Trump, playing a reality-TV role that actor-cum-president Ronald Reagan would have been proud of. Or such as Biden, adopting whatever position that will garner him more votes. There is a discernible populism spreading through the United States that rejects Establishment politicians. Just where it eventually ends up cannot be predicted. We do, however, confidently predict that neither Trump or Biden will run capitalism in the interest of the vast majority who make up the working class in America.
Whoever wins in November, the American ruling class will have been successful. It is virtually indisputable that whoever in the Oval Office the capitalist class will continue to do their utmost to get more out of us for less by intensifying the exploitation process and attacking our living standards. This can only set the scene for the intensification of class struggle, a struggle which is our only hope in resisting the attacks of capital. But no-one should be in any doubt that the only way that our problems can be really solved is when such a defensive class struggle transforms itself into a pro-active struggle which finally abolishes capitalism itself.
Solidarity
JNS Instruments factory, plot 4 sector-3, Industrial Model Town, Manesar, Gurgaon, India, has 2500 workers. Sixty percent females.
On Friday, 21st August at the beginning of A-shift at 6am workers did not go to their workplaces.
Videos of the event can be watched at:
https://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.noblogs.org/post/2020/08/23/factory-workers-videos/
On Friday, 21st August at the beginning of A-shift at 6am workers did not go to their workplaces.
Videos of the event can be watched at:
https://faridabadmajdoorsamachar.noblogs.org/post/2020/08/23/factory-workers-videos/
Our Melting World
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A total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994. That is stunning conclusion of UK scientists who have analysed satellite surveys of the planet’s poles, mountains and glaciers to measure how much ice coverage lost because of global warming triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions. The level of ice loss revealed by the group matches the worst-case-scenario predictions outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“There can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth’s ice loss is a direct consequence of climate warming,” they state in their review paper, which is published in the online journal Cryosphere Discussions.
Scientists at Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London describe the level of ice loss as “staggering” and warn that their analysis indicates that sea level rises, triggered by melting glaciers and ice sheets, could reach a metre by the end of the century.
“To put that in context, every centimetre of sea level rise means about a million people will be displaced from their low-lying homelands,” said Professor Andy Shepherd, director of Leeds University’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. “…What we have found has stunned us.”
“To put the losses we’ve already experienced into context, 28 trillion tonnes of ice would cover the entire surface of the UK with a sheet of frozen water that is 100 metres thick,” added group member Tom Slater from Leeds University. “It’s just mind-blowing.”
The scientists also warn that the melting of ice in these quantities is now seriously reducing the planet’s ability to reflect solar radiation back into space. White ice is disappearing and the dark sea or soil exposed beneath it is absorbing more and more heat, further increasing the warming of the planet.
In addition, cold fresh water pouring from melting glaciers and ice sheets is causing major disruptions to the biological health of Arctic and Antarctic waters.
While loss of glaciers in mountain ranges threatens to wipe out sources of fresh water on which local communities depend.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/23/earth-lost-28-trillion-tonnes-ice-30-years-global-warming
Capitalist Cancer Has Only One Cure
Democrat and Republican leaders have always played Good Cop/Bad Cop. The first thing to note is when most political commentators advocate voting for the ‘lesser evil’, they rarely describe the lesser ‘evil’ but rather endow the ‘evil’ with numerous virtues. Find the positive things to praise; point out how scary the opponent is; find reasons to say that unlike the opponent a very rich powerful establishment figure is actually on the side of the common people and make sure not to mention the voting record that shows your candidate is against the common people.
We are admonished by the experts and pundits that politics is the art of the possible and to be reasonable in our expectations of those we elect, who all campaign on the impossible – reforming capitalism into a humane system that acts in the interests of the majority and not for the protection of the interests of the minority. The pragmatists tell us you have to have a seat at the table to enact real change but the real decisions are not made at the tables of government offices but in the board-rooms of the corporations and the floors of the stock-exchanges.
Sanders endorsed Biden because he believes he has bound him to the most progressive platform since FDR’s New Deal – a hyperbolic claim, if there ever was one, although it is merely election promises. The rhetoric is still to be turned into deeds and we shall see, as with all manifesto pledges, they get quickly broken. Remember all those Obama promises of change?
The logic of the lesser evil ensures that each new election cycle will see both greater and lesser evils being more evil than the last time around. Supporting Biden only strengthens the right-ward drift. It is simply impossible to support either Trump or Biden in good conscience. US voters are faced with a non-choice. Supporting Trump is an expression of hateful xenophobia or an act of delusional desperation, but supporting Biden is a clear endorsement of his past record of nationalism and militarism.
A wasted vote is voting for somebody you don’t believe in. That’s a wasted vote. Vote for what you believe in – that’s how you bring about change. It is better to have the vote than not to have it. The wealthy who opposed votes for workers on the grounds that the working class is many and the property-owning rich parasites are few and therefore the many might end the social power of the few had a point.
Sadly, the working-class franchise has not yet justified those fears of real democracy. The workers have been persuaded to play the game: bought off by reforms and conned by leaders, the potential power of the vote has been wasted in every single election.
The answer is not to abandon the vote and ignore elections, but to work to create a politically educated electorate of working men and women who understand where their interest lies. The battle, not just when the electoral whistle blows, but at all times, is to win workers’ minds; to make class-conscious workers. Such workers, currently only a small minority, will never waste their votes on electing leaders, nor will they support any policy designed to run the profit system which exploits and dominates them. We, in the World Socialist Party enter into the electoral contest, using it as a means of putting our revolutionary case for socialism to the widest number of fellow workers. The WSPUS views socialism as a worldwide society. The interconnected nature of today’s world makes it impossible to create a new society in a single country. Capitalism is a world system, so socialism too must be a world system. Socialists often describe socialism as a society where there will be free access, but what could this mean in concrete terms?
Socialism will be a society of free access to what has been produced. This does not mean alcohol being made available to children or anyone being able to get hold of guns. But there’ll be no money, credit cards or check books, no artificial barriers to people having what they’ve decided they want. But how would free access work, and would it lead to a free-for-all and chaos as people just took more and more.
Abolition of Money. Down through the ages this wild and visionary slogan has been whispered by a subversive few. Ever since human beings discovered money, they have hated it and tried to rid themselves of it – whilst their own actions have kept it alive. In this respect, money is like syphilis. When bacteria enter a person’s bloodstream, so that person’s health is gradually undermined. It is the same with money as with bacteria. Since money has unlimited power in the world, the ways of the world are bound to be increasingly debased. Step by step, morality is bound to be ruined and human nature faced with corruption. In the end, society is driven to destruction.
400BC: Hey all you thirsty people, though you’ve got no money, come to the water. Buy corn without money and eat. Buy wine without money and milk without price (Isaiah 55:1)
1652: There shall be no buying and selling . . . If any man or family want grain or other provisions, they may go to the storehouse and fetch without money (Gerrard Winstanley)
1968: The Abolition of Money. The abolition of pay housing, pay media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education, pay clothing, pay medical help and pay toilets. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of ‘full unemployment’ (Yippie election leaflet)
California Aflame
California’s forest fires have displaced more than 100,000 people and killed six and incinerated hundreds of homes, burning 991,000 acres over seven days. Some 560 wildfires were burning throughout the state on Saturday. What is unsettling the authorities is that the state had not even hit its peak wildfire season yet.
Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “ There’s no doubt that the risk of catastrophic wildfires is increasing dramatically because of climate change.”
The state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said, “We simply haven’t seen anything like this in many, many years.”
Among those tackling the blazes are more than 1,300 prisoners who have been entrusted with the backbreaking work of clearing the fire-fueling vegetation in exchange for for only $2-5 a day, with an extra $1 a day when actively fighting a wildfire and reduced sentences. Although when she was California’s general attorny Kamala Harris declined to free those prisoners, maintaining that their cheap labor was required.
“Their labor has been exploited for decades,” Romarilyn Ralston, who leads Project Rebound, a California State University program that supports formerly incarcerated students, recently told the Guardian. “People are injured, sometimes not fully prepared for fighting a wildland fire.”
Also at risk are the tens of thousands of farm-workers in the region. In Santa Cruz county, where Reyes picks strawberries, more than 20,000 people have been ordered to evacuate as the CZU August Lightning Complex fire grew to 40,000 acres. To the south lies Steinbeck country, the lush agricultural valley of the Central Coast that was the setting for the Grapes of Wrath. Here, the Carmel fire burns at 4,285 acres and 0% containment and the River fire at 33,653 acres and 7% containment. Farther south on the coast, about 10 miles from Big Sur, the Dolan fire grew to 6,700 acres. Together, these fires formed a heavy cloud of smoke that hung overhead as these workers picked their crops. State regulations require companies to provide workers with masks when the air quality reaches a certain threshold of very bad but that doesn’t always happen. The agriculture industry in general is very segmented, with layers of contracting and subcontracting. Safety protocols established by a company may not reach the ones tasked with hiring and overseeing the fieldworkers. Compounding this year’s smoke exposure is the coronavirus that affects the lungs.
“Because of who most farmworkers are, because of the culture that has developed in agriculture, there are a lot of workers who don’t receive the safety conditions that are on paper,” said Lucas Zucker, the policy and communications director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. “There is also often a culture where if you speak up or say you don’t want to work, you may be seen as someone who is lazy or doesn’t want to work and you may not be called back for the next harvest.”
Almost 208,000 people across California work in the frontline essential agriculture industry from the lush almond tree orchards in the north to the cornfields of the Central Valley. Farm-workers already worked in conditions that were ripe for abuse and exploitation, worker rights organizations say. And with larger and more destructive wildfires arriving with each coming year in California, advocates have found it even more difficult to protect their rights.
“Whether it’s wildfire, pandemic, drought or storm, farm-workers are out in the field,” said Lucas Zucker. “It’s a largely immigrant workforce, many undocumented. Many are from indigenous communities from southern Mexico who face even greater barriers to accessing services and reporting labor abuses.”
Farm-workers in California are “particularly vulnerable”, he continued, because of the nature of the crops and the industry. “It’s extremely labor-intensive crops that require a lot of people out in the fields picking by hand. You’ll see thousands of workers out there picking strawberries, as opposed to Iowa, where there are cornfields where it’s mostly automated.”
Paid time off and sick days are not an option in this line of work. Who is going to pay the bills?
Bolivia’s Right-wing Gangs
While the media rightly criticized Madura’s use of informal paramilitaries to suppress protests, it seems that similar tactics used by conservatives who usurped power in Bolivia does not deserve the same condemnation.
Since late July, a mass protest movement has gripped Bolivia, including massive demonstrations blocking roads across the country, with people taking to the streets over the country’s repeated election delays. However, many protesters have been harassed and beaten up by motorcycle gangs. Some call them paramilitary groups.
People are angry because the election has already been pushed back several times. Originally, it was set for May 3. Then, because of the pandemic, it was pushed back to August 2. Then, September 6. And, now, October 18. On July 23, Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced that the general elections, set for September 6, would be pushed back to October 18 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The announcement that voters would have to wait to choose the president, vice president, representatives and senators sparked massive protests across the country. People called for a general strike on August 3. Protesters also set up a number of roadblocks.
many Bolivians want to cast their votes as soon as possible because the country is currently run by a transitional government put in place after former president Evo Morales resigned in November 2019. Morales was re-elected in October 2019, but the opposition argued that there were election irregularities, a claim seconded by the regional body the Organisation of American States. The claims of invalidity were later declared unfounded. The protesters believe that the current government is pushing back the elections to unfairly prolong Jeanine Añez’s tenure, even though the candidate from the Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS) is leading in the polls.
Violent gangs have been harassing and intimidating them. There are different groups in different towns. In Cochabamba, they are called “Resistencia Juvenil Cochala”, currently the most active group, while, in La Paz, the group is known as “Resistencia Km 0”. The group operating in Santa Cruz is called “Unión Juvenil Cruceñista”.
Resistencia Juvenil Cochala is made up mainly of young men between the ages of 20 and 30, seems to have been formed after the contested re-election of Evo Morales in October 2019. In a video posted online on August 9, leader Yasir Molina called on all Bolivians to “come out to clear out your area.” On Facebook, Resistencia Juvenil Cochala describes itself as a “rapid reaction group defending their town”. Their aim is to get him out of office. “Resistencia Km 0” has essentially the same origin story. The members of these groups use intimidation and violence.
The Bolivian human rights group, published a statement about this group and other ones like it. The statement referenced the events that occurred on August 8 and 9 and said that “violent actions have been occuring in a constant and repeated manner since the start of the year”.The statement also referred to “groups that have been infiltrated by private actors of a paramilitary nature who have illegally taken powers that belong to the Bolivian police to defend their political positions”. In early February, Bolivian journalist Adair Pinto was threatened, insulted and eventually stabbed by a member of Resistencia Juvenil Cochala. Pinto has since left the country and his attacker was arrested. Other journalists had also been threatened by members of the group.
The current transitional government and the security forces have largely tolerated, or sometimes outright supported, this group. In their statement published on August 9, the office of Defensoría del Pueblo criticised the “permissiveness of the state” with regards to the group’s actions. A few months ago, the interim president posted a tweet thanking Resistencia Juvenil Cochala. A photo of her holding a the group’s logo was also widely shared. At the end of 2019, government minister Arturo Murillo attended a ceremony meant to honour, among others, members of Resistencia Juvenil Cochala in Cochabamba. In January, Milton Navarro, who served as sports minister until June 4, declared that they were “courageous” and that they should be recognised.
“These groups enjoy a certain impunity,” said Fernando López Ariñez, a Bolivian political commentator. “Moreover, traditional media outlets have not spoken out against these groups. Instead they sometimes try to legitimise the actions of these groups, presenting them as civilian actors.”
https://observers.france24.com/en/20200821-armed-thugs-go-after-protesters-bolivia
Since late July, a mass protest movement has gripped Bolivia, including massive demonstrations blocking roads across the country, with people taking to the streets over the country’s repeated election delays. However, many protesters have been harassed and beaten up by motorcycle gangs. Some call them paramilitary groups.
People are angry because the election has already been pushed back several times. Originally, it was set for May 3. Then, because of the pandemic, it was pushed back to August 2. Then, September 6. And, now, October 18. On July 23, Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal announced that the general elections, set for September 6, would be pushed back to October 18 because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The announcement that voters would have to wait to choose the president, vice president, representatives and senators sparked massive protests across the country. People called for a general strike on August 3. Protesters also set up a number of roadblocks.
many Bolivians want to cast their votes as soon as possible because the country is currently run by a transitional government put in place after former president Evo Morales resigned in November 2019. Morales was re-elected in October 2019, but the opposition argued that there were election irregularities, a claim seconded by the regional body the Organisation of American States. The claims of invalidity were later declared unfounded. The protesters believe that the current government is pushing back the elections to unfairly prolong Jeanine Añez’s tenure, even though the candidate from the Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism Party (MAS) is leading in the polls.
Violent gangs have been harassing and intimidating them. There are different groups in different towns. In Cochabamba, they are called “Resistencia Juvenil Cochala”, currently the most active group, while, in La Paz, the group is known as “Resistencia Km 0”. The group operating in Santa Cruz is called “Unión Juvenil Cruceñista”.
Resistencia Juvenil Cochala is made up mainly of young men between the ages of 20 and 30, seems to have been formed after the contested re-election of Evo Morales in October 2019. In a video posted online on August 9, leader Yasir Molina called on all Bolivians to “come out to clear out your area.” On Facebook, Resistencia Juvenil Cochala describes itself as a “rapid reaction group defending their town”. Their aim is to get him out of office. “Resistencia Km 0” has essentially the same origin story. The members of these groups use intimidation and violence.
The Bolivian human rights group, published a statement about this group and other ones like it. The statement referenced the events that occurred on August 8 and 9 and said that “violent actions have been occuring in a constant and repeated manner since the start of the year”.The statement also referred to “groups that have been infiltrated by private actors of a paramilitary nature who have illegally taken powers that belong to the Bolivian police to defend their political positions”. In early February, Bolivian journalist Adair Pinto was threatened, insulted and eventually stabbed by a member of Resistencia Juvenil Cochala. Pinto has since left the country and his attacker was arrested. Other journalists had also been threatened by members of the group.
The current transitional government and the security forces have largely tolerated, or sometimes outright supported, this group. In their statement published on August 9, the office of Defensoría del Pueblo criticised the “permissiveness of the state” with regards to the group’s actions. A few months ago, the interim president posted a tweet thanking Resistencia Juvenil Cochala. A photo of her holding a the group’s logo was also widely shared. At the end of 2019, government minister Arturo Murillo attended a ceremony meant to honour, among others, members of Resistencia Juvenil Cochala in Cochabamba. In January, Milton Navarro, who served as sports minister until June 4, declared that they were “courageous” and that they should be recognised.
“These groups enjoy a certain impunity,” said Fernando López Ariñez, a Bolivian political commentator. “Moreover, traditional media outlets have not spoken out against these groups. Instead they sometimes try to legitimise the actions of these groups, presenting them as civilian actors.”
https://observers.france24.com/en/20200821-armed-thugs-go-after-protesters-bolivia
Workers and the Pandemic
Bal Harbour, Florida, has emerged mostly unscathed from the pandemic. According to the Florida department of health, 49 of 3,039 Bal Harbour residents had tested positive through 8 August. Surfside, with a population of 5,802, also has 49 cases. Bay Harbor has recorded 45 cases in a village of 5,553 people. And 22 residents in Sunny Isles Beach, home to 20,832 people, have tested positive.
Roughly 8.5% of the 238,942 residents of Hialeah, the second largest municipality in Miami-Dade, have tested positive for Covid-19. The city’s 20,261 cases is the fourth-most of any city in Florida. Indeed, Hialeah has hit a crisis point.
In between Bal Harbour and Hialeah, some of Miami’s historically low income, African American neighborhoods have also been hit hard. In Allapattah, Brownsville, Liberty City and Little River, 7,313 residents have contracted coronavirus, according to the Florida department of health’s most recent daily report.
Dr Bernard Ashby, a Miami cardiologist and the Florida state lead for the Committee to Protect Medicare, said wealthy municipalities like Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Surfside and Sunny Isles Beach are largely segregated from the rest of Miami-Dade.
“You are seeing the distinction between the haves and the have-nots,” Ashby said. “If you look at all the negative indicators of this virus, it directly correlates with a person’s race and socioeconomic status.”
The pandemic has accelerated the wealth gap while having a disproportionate impact on middle- to low-income workers whose jobs dictate they show up.
The city’s residents are also most likely working jobs that requires them to be there physically, said Dr Mona Mangat, a physician based in St Petersburg who is also a member of the Committee to Protect Medicare.
“If we look specifically at the makeup of these communities, they tend to do more frontline jobs, so they are more likely to be exposed,” Mangat said. “More than likely they do not have access to consistent healthcare.
Despite Miami-Dade being a coronavirus hot zone, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbour Islands and Surfside are still attracting high net worth buyers from New York and other parts of the north-east. These people can isolate themselves from the world in multimillion-dollar waterfront condos and single family homes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/florida-coronavirus-covid-wealth-gap-miami-dade
Roughly 8.5% of the 238,942 residents of Hialeah, the second largest municipality in Miami-Dade, have tested positive for Covid-19. The city’s 20,261 cases is the fourth-most of any city in Florida. Indeed, Hialeah has hit a crisis point.
In between Bal Harbour and Hialeah, some of Miami’s historically low income, African American neighborhoods have also been hit hard. In Allapattah, Brownsville, Liberty City and Little River, 7,313 residents have contracted coronavirus, according to the Florida department of health’s most recent daily report.
Dr Bernard Ashby, a Miami cardiologist and the Florida state lead for the Committee to Protect Medicare, said wealthy municipalities like Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands, Surfside and Sunny Isles Beach are largely segregated from the rest of Miami-Dade.
“You are seeing the distinction between the haves and the have-nots,” Ashby said. “If you look at all the negative indicators of this virus, it directly correlates with a person’s race and socioeconomic status.”
The pandemic has accelerated the wealth gap while having a disproportionate impact on middle- to low-income workers whose jobs dictate they show up.
The city’s residents are also most likely working jobs that requires them to be there physically, said Dr Mona Mangat, a physician based in St Petersburg who is also a member of the Committee to Protect Medicare.
“If we look specifically at the makeup of these communities, they tend to do more frontline jobs, so they are more likely to be exposed,” Mangat said. “More than likely they do not have access to consistent healthcare.
Despite Miami-Dade being a coronavirus hot zone, Bal Harbour, Bay Harbour Islands and Surfside are still attracting high net worth buyers from New York and other parts of the north-east. These people can isolate themselves from the world in multimillion-dollar waterfront condos and single family homes.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/22/florida-coronavirus-covid-wealth-gap-miami-dade
Cyber Serfdom
The word “gig” has distracted society from important questions about the gig economy that are surprisingly traditional: whether a business has employees or contractors, and how it can avoid payroll taxes and legal liability. Countless business models have been built under the guise of gigs, Uber and Lyft two of the best known cases.
But with state governments like California facing increasing revenue shortfalls and an estimated 57 million gig workers in the United States noting a lack of employer protections and fair wages, the matter has shifted to the courts. As the protections governing the traditional employer-employee relationship have been increasingly subverted, workers have responded by turning to the courts to rectify this loophole that has allowed their employment conditions to become a form of indentured servitude. And the courts are largely ruling in their favor. These are also consistent with a growing number of decisions in other countries, such as the UK, where Uber is now appealing a lower court ruling that its drivers should be classified as employees “entitled to employment protections such as a minimum wage and holiday pay,” and in Canada, where the country’s Supreme Court has recently ruled that Uber drivers were entitled to sue for traditional benefits and vacation pay.
Over the past decades, the rise of neoliberalism has enabled employers to tilt the terms of our capitalist economies heavily toward capital and away from labor, via the evisceration of unions, the deconstruction of the welfare state, and the privatization of public services. The growing use of the independent contractor classification represents the latest attempt to exploit and amplify this power imbalance. What makes this trend particularly galling is that the main economic drivers of this transition to serfdom fancy themselves as enlightened, socially “woke” corporations but in fact all embrace employment practices more evocative of the 19th-century robber barons.
In the judgments, the courts explicitly highlighted the massive imbalance in the so-called “contractor” relationship between the companies and their respective workforces, which invalidates any notion of the “contractors” being genuinely independent. The Canadian Supreme Court specifically cited the inequality of bargaining power between the plaintiff and Uber, noting that the driver was in fact powerless to negotiate any of its terms of his engagement with the company. In other words, Uber exercises full control over them as employees, but it attempts to escape its obligations by designating the drivers as independent contractors. Consequently, the UK Court of Appeal characterized Uber’s description of the work relationship “a sham.”
In a genuinely independent contractor relationship, the quid pro quo is higher pay as an offset to the lack of paid benefits. But companies in the gig economy generally don’t operate this way: Uber and Lyft pay minimum wages that in many instances compel employees to work 70-80 hours per week to make a living. That considerably impinges on the contractor’s supposed work-time flexibility, as well as rendering it virtually impossible to afford decent benefits, such as adequate health insurance, let alone sick pay or vacation leave. In the words of a recent report of the National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel (NLRB GC), “Uber drivers—who earn about $9–$10 an hour—can’t expand revenues because they can’t control prices or expand their customer base—the only thing they can do is drive more hours.”
While they are called “independent contractors,” their independence is illusory because the so-called “entrepreneurs” in reality “do not even have basic control over how they deliver rides… [and] are ‘supervised’ by semi-automated and algorithmic systems that track their acceptance rates, time on trips, speed, customer ratings, and other factors, and drivers can be ‘deactivated’ based on these factors.” That’s not a co-equal work relationship between an employer and an independent contractor; it’s more a form of indentured servitude.
Taken from here
https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/why-courts-across-the-globe-keep-finding-the-gig-economy-is-the-road-to-serfdom/