Author: ajohnstone

Kafala in Qatar Still Hurting

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Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers and its human rights record have been under the spotlight since it was awarded the hosting of football’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Under Qatar’s “kafala” (Arabic word for sponsorship) system, migrant workers must obtain their employers’ permission – a no-objection certificate (NOC) – before changing jobs, a law that rights activists say ties their presence in the country to their employers and could lead to abuse and exploitation.
However, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, released on Monday, said the country’s “efforts to protect migrant workers’ right to accurate and timely wages have largely proven unsuccessful”.
“Despite a handful of reforms in recent years, withheld and unpaid salaries, as well as other wage abuses, are persistent and widespread across at least 60 employers and companies in Qatar,” the report added. HRW said most of the migrant workers it spoke to for the report experienced salary delays, non-payment of dues and end-of-service benefits. Some said “employers made arbitrary deductions from their salaries”.
“This is a pervasive issue, not just in Qatar but across the Gulf. It is important to stress that our report does not say nor intend to imply that all migrant workers in Qatar suffer wage abuses. Instead, it seeks to show that they work against a backdrop that both enables widespread wage abuse and fails to adequately protect them from it when it occurs.”
HRW’s Zayadin said while “Qatar has made many promises to migrant workers over the past several years and has introduced some reforms”, they were not going far enough.
“Time and again, migrant workers in Qatar have been disappointed to find that the marketed reforms have done little to improve their lived realities in the country,” she added. “If Qatar truly wants these reforms to reverberate on the ground and to make a difference in the lives of those they aim to target, they need to abolish kafala in its entirety, allow workers to join trade unions, and introduce reforms that address harmful business practices.”
In June, Al Jazeera published a report on how the coronavirus shutdown affected Qatar’s migrant workers. It spoke to hundreds of workers employed by private companies in the country and found that most were in a “no work, no pay” situation, struggling to survive despite the government’s stimulus package. Al Jazeera spoke to numerous affected migrant workers, including driving instructors, salon staff, baristas, chefs, private taxi drivers, small business owners, and hotel and hospitality staff. Most of them have not received any assistance from their employers and are too afraid to complain.
Al Jazeera has learned that despite a lot of coronavirus-enforced restrictions being lifted as part of Qatar’s four-phase plan to reopen the country and economy, a number of private sponsors are still not paying staff, despite making them work.
“I’m working six hours daily all week but getting paid just over seven riyals [$1.9] per hour,” staff from another cleaning company told Al Jazeera. “Because, until now, the company is still not operating fully, they said they are unable to pay us what the contract says.
“My last salary was paid in March. Since then, the company has not given us anything, not even a single riyal. We are only able to survive through private donations of rice and food items.”
Some workers said they have not been paid since January. Others are being paid a fraction of their salaries. Workers have also told Al Jazeera some employers transfer salaries into the workers’ bank accounts but force the employees to hand over the ATM cards before withdrawing the amount.
Workers are also losing faith in the system due to the barriers to accessing justice that exist in Qatar echoing the fear among migrant workers of repercussions if they complain.  The announcement of reforms or a report means little.

Pandemic – Poor Nations Suffer

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The International Monetary Fund has said low-income developing countries (LIDCs) entered the pandemic in a vulnerable position and faced the prospect of their progress in poverty reduction over the past seven to 10 years being wiped out.
 Growth, which averaged 5% in 2019, was likely to come to a standstill this year, the IMF said, adding that previous pandemics had left permanent scars.
“LIDCs entered the Covid-19 crisis in an already vulnerable position – for example, half of them suffered high public debt levels,” the IMF said. “Since March, LIDCs have been hit by an exceptional confluence of external shocks: a sharp contraction in real exports, lower export prices, especially for oil, less capital and remittances inflows, and reduced tourism receipts. Despite the best efforts of LIDC governments, lasting damage seems unavoidable in the absence of more international support. Long-term ‘scarring’ – the permanent loss of productive capacity – is a particularly worrisome prospect.”
Scarring from past pandemics had included high death rates, worse health and education outcomes leading to weaker future earnings; a depletion in savings and assets that result in the closure of firms; and a legacy of debt that depressed lending to the private sector. 
The IMF said that in the aftermath of the 2013 Ebola outreak, Sierra Leone never recovered to its pre-crisis growth path.
“Scarring would trigger severe setbacks to LIDCs’ development efforts, including undoing the gains in reducing poverty over the last seven to 10 years, and exacerbating inequality, including gender inequality,” the IMF said.

The New Abnormal

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No election would be complete without denial, delusion, deception, and those words: “the lesser of two evils.” At every election leftists argue about ‘lesser evil’ and ‘tactical voting’. Truth is the bosses have both parties in the palms of their hands, while we need one of our own. Workers who are so hypnotized by the promise of reforms, those bandaids upon the festering sores of a social structure, that they neglect to observe the rottenness of the capitalist system itself, will naturally support that party whose program promises them most, providing that they retain enough infantile trustfulness to believe anything from the mouth of a politician. Suicidal though this is, and regrettable from the socialist standpoint, there is no doubt that the workers who will to vote for Joe Biden believe they are acting intelligently. He might bring some seeming advantage to some other sections of the workers. He might introduce measures bringing fleeting relief to the some of the working class who forget to ask themselves why reform legislation is necessary, and why, in spite of it, their conditions still grow steadily worse.

Socialism distinguishes itself from capitalism by this fundamental requirement: the community shall own the means of production in common. Biden believes in the capitalist system. He might advocate reform of capitalism’s current excesses, but he is still pro-capitalist. The World Socialist Party of the United States doesn’t see capitalism as a reformable institution but liberal and progressives willing to vote for Biden do. Biden believes in a basic market economy with a welfare state and a healthy amount of regulation, standard fare for a Democrat politician’s promises. Like all politicians Biden is selling America a fantasy.

The US has the highest number of its citizens languishing behind bars. Biden played a central role in winning support for Bill Clinton’s two crime bills in 1994 and 1996 that required mandatory sentencing guidelines, accelerated spending on prisons and put more police on the streets. Now he wants us to believe that he has had a change of heart and wants to end the worst abuses of the system. Everyone talks about how awful it would be if Trump won again but what he has been doing is what the Democrats have actually been doing in previous years –  regime change campaign, the death squad campaigns, all hidden in the artful dodge of the humanitarian intervention. Biden is running a supposedly liberal campaign because he had to fend off the populist candidacy from Sanders. Nothing he says is the truth because once he gets in the office he will do what exactly what he espoused in the past with  trade agreements like NAFTA and while in the Senate or VP he never opposed any wars, pushed hard for the destruction of Libya. Biden has the blood on his hands while put a moral veneer over military intervention, killing in the name of democracy, and taking credit for it as being humanitarian even if it isn’t.

Whatever else might be said about these and related facts on economic mobility, they show that America is not a land of opportunity in which everyone has a good chance to get ahead. The rich are getting richer, at the expense of the rest of us. This is not a radical viewpoint. It is well understood by everyone. The hard part is not grasping what is happening. The hard part is motivating people to do something about it.

We have choices to make. There’s no way that reforming this current system is going to change the quality of life for the majority of humanity. Quite the opposite. The more we improve the system, the more we’re keep the system whose logical outcome will be the destruction of the planet. The global economy by definition destroys the planet. To-day’s capitalist way of living has maybe a 30-year expiry date on it. Communicating this message to our fellow workers is a strong and urgent priority. The global capitalist culture wants us to believe that there is no alternative. Free access and sharing is going to be a central pillar of the post-capitalist world. The social revolution needn’t be violent. It will probably be multifaceted, and multilayered.

Socialism is one of the most abused and misunderstood words in modern history. Socialism has always been based upon the idea of social ownership and control of the means of production, to be achieved through the expropriation of the private property of the capitalist class.

 Eugene Debs called for workers to unite to “assert their combined power” to “break the fetters of wage slavery.” Sanders is yet to refer to wage slavery as endemic in a capitalist economy, as Debs did. Debs spoke derisively of the business owner, who “holds the exploited wage worker in utter contempt…No master ever had any respect for his slave, and no slave ever had, or ever could have, any real love for his master.” “Prostitution,” Debs wrote, “is a part, a necessary part, of capitalist society.” He called for workers to “assume control of every industry” and for ownership to be “transferred from the idle capitalist to the workers to whom it rightfully belongs.” Biden still guarantees the corporations their independence.

Win-Win for the Rich

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 While Trump and top members of his administration continue push for another round of tax cuts to rich investors, a new analysis published Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness showed that U.S. billionaires have seen their collective wealth soar by nearly $800 billion since Covid-19 began spreading rapidly across the country in March.



 The research found that between March 18 and August 20—a five-month period in which the economy tanked and tens of millions of people across the U.S. lost their jobs—the combined wealth of America’s more than 600 billionaires jumped by $792 billion, bringing their collective net worth to a staggering $3.7 trillion.



 “For billionaires, this is a heads we win, tails you lose economy, boosted by Trump policies to funnel wealth to the top,” Chuck Collins, director of the IPS Program on Inequality, said. He explained that just 12 U.S. billionaires now own more than a trillion dollars in combined wealth is “an unprecedented and disturbing indicator of the concentrated wealth during a pandemic.” According to IPS, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—has seen his wealth grow by $81.9 billion since mid-March, a bigger jump than any other U.S. billionaire.



 https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/26/trump-pushes-new-tax-cuts-wealthy-analysis-shows-us-billionaires-800-billion-richer

Monbiot and the Malthusians

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The Guardian columnist George Monbiot writes a scathing article criticising the over-populationists.



 Firstly he reminds readers of the major study published last month, showing that the global population is likely to peak then crash much sooner than most scientists had assumed, 



 “I naively imagined that people in rich nations would at last stop blaming all the world’s environmental problems on population growth. I was wrong. If anything, it appears to have got worse….”



 Monbiot points out that  “…the BirthStrike movement  will dissolve itself, because its cause has been hijacked so virulently and persistently by population obsessives. The founders explain that they had “underestimated the power of ‘overpopulation’ as a growing form of climate breakdown denial”…”



 He concedes,  that “in some parts of the world, population growth is a major driver of particular kinds of ecological damage, such as the expansion of small-scale agriculture into rainforests, the bushmeat trade and local pressure on water and land for housing. But its global impact is much smaller than many people claim.”



 Then he cites the scientific formula  for calculating people’s environmental footprint.



  “Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology (I = PAT). The global rate of consumption growth, before the pandemic, was 3% a year. Population growth is 1%. Some people assume this means that the rise in population bears one-third of the responsibility for increased consumption. But population growth is overwhelmingly concentrated among the world’s poorest people, who have scarcely any A or T to multiply their P. The extra resource use and greenhouse gas emissions caused by a rising human population are a tiny fraction of the impact of consumption growth. “



 Monbiot explains that “Panic about population growth enables the people most responsible for the impacts of rising consumption (the affluent) to blame those who are least responsible.”



 He highlights the hypocrisy of over-populationists such as Jane Goodall,  a patron of the charity Population Matters.

“…Goodall appeared in an advertisement for British Airways, whose customers produce more greenhouse gas emissions on one flight than many of the world’s people generate in a year. If we had the global population of 500 years ago (around 500 million), and if it were composed of average UK plane passengers, our environmental impact would probably be greater than that of the 7.8 billion alive today.
She proposed no mechanism by which her dream might come true. This could be the attraction. The very impotence of her call is reassuring to those who don’t want change. If the answer to environmental crisis is to wish other people away, we might as well give up and carry on consuming….”
Monbiot also explains that Sir David Attenborough, also a patron of Population Matters, wrongly blamed famines in Ethiopia on “too many people for too little land”, and suggested that sending food aid was counter-productive.
The article then goes into the relationship of the over-populationists and racism. 
“…Most of the world’s population growth is happening in the poorest countries, where most people are black or brown. The colonial powers justified their atrocities by fomenting a moral panic about “barbaric”, “degenerate” people “outbreeding” the “superior races”. These claims have been revived today by the far right, who promote conspiracy theories about “white replacement” and “white genocide”. When affluent white people wrongly transfer the blame for their environmental impacts on to the birthrate of much poorer brown and black people, their finger-pointing reinforces these narratives. It is inherently racist…”
His article ends with the conclusion that “Nations will soon be fighting over immigrants: not to exclude them, but to attract them, as the demographic transition leaves their ageing populations with a shrinking tax base and a dearth of key workers. Until then, we should resist attempts by the rich to demonise the poor…”
Much of the article is reflected in numerous posts on this blog. Fortunately, George Monbiot has a wider and larger audience than ourselves, so the message travels a lot further.

Poverty and the Education Gap

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The learning gap between rich and poor primary age pupils in England has widened. 



 Disadvantaged primary pupils more than nine months behind, with the gap widening for the first time since 2007



 Disadvantaged secondary pupils are more than 18 months behind their better-off classmates by the time they take their GCSEs – the same as five years ago, the researchers found.

The researchers identify the increasing proportion of children in persistent poverty as a key cause of the reversal which, they say, is becoming more entrenched each year. The researchers found a strong link between persistent poverty and weaker educational performance.
Children on free school meals for more than 80% of their schooldays were almost two years (22.7 months) behind their wealthier classmates.
Those children on free school meals for less than 20% of their time at school had a learning gap of just under a year (11.3 months).
Last year’s report said it would take more than 500 years to close the gap – now it looks as if it is no longer closing at all.
Sam Butters and Gina Cicerone, joint chief executives of the Fair Education Alliance which collaborated on the report, called its findings “sobering”.
“Without systemic change, this gap will never close,” they added.
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said with children coming to school too hungry to learn, education staff had been working flat out to tackle the effects of poverty, even before the pandemic.
It is widely expected that the pandemic lockdown school closures will widen the gap even further.

The Republicrats

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It has been said that the attraction of Bernie Sanders was his principled position. However, Sanders can be criticized for having conceded the most basic of socialist tenets: that an independent working class must create its own revolutionary party and put an end to class collaboration. His support and endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and his support for Joe Biden in 2020 legitimizes those who feel a need to offer a “pragmatic” electoral policy of the “lesser evil”. Success in the class struggle demands working-class independence from all capitalist parties. Sanders instead simply increased the ability of the the Democrats to absorb and defuse discontent.

The task of convincing our fellow–workers of socialism is a daunting one. There is a cornucopia of radical-left parties in the United States but the almost-forgotten World Socialist Party of the United States may impress you if you have an appreciation of the history of America’s socialist movement.

The WSPUS maintains that it has been unique in the history of American socialist parties since its inception by unrelentingly putting forward the original conception of socialism, defined as a post-capitalist mode of production where the accumulation of capital is no longer the driving force governing production, but production is instead undertaken to produce goods and services directly for use.

The WSPUS defines socialism as a money-free society based on common ownership of the means of production and cooperative and democratic associations as opposed to bureaucratic hierarchies and companies. Additionally, the WSPUS considers being state-free, class-free and the abolition of wage labor as components of a socialist society—characteristics that are usually reserved to describe a fully developed communist society. Unlike anarchists the World Socialist Party advocates a political revolution because it argues that as the state is the “executive committee” of the capitalist class. It must be captured by the working class to keep the former from using it against the will of the latter.

Today when a “socialist” supports a Democratic Party candidate, it is like boarding a train that is headed in the opposite direction of one’s destination. The Democratic Party is a top-down political party, controlled by corporations, and indisputably pro-capitalist. Capitalism is above all an economic system that promotes diametrically opposed interests between workers and capitalists. Capitalists must compete against one another in order to survive, and to compete successfully they must maximize profits, which in turn requires keeping production costs, including labor costs, to a minimum. Joe Biden might say he is for ordinary working people or for the “middle class,” but he is also for corporations, because capitalism cannot operate smoothly without the smooth functioning of corporations, and hence, Biden’s loyalties are at best divided, sowing more confusion than clarity. His distinguishing attribute is that he favors a tighter leash on corporations and a stronger safety net for the working class, which is mere reformism. America badly needs a vigorous socialist party.

Many have been inspired by Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Even the most cynical socialist acknowledges that he did much to bring back into the political discourse in the United States the ideas of socialism. He legitimized the concept of socialism in electoral politics. He gathered around him many supporters, some who now pledge that they will continue their activities to achieve a more just America, independent of the Democratic Party machine which was always biased against Sanders who is now fated to become a footnote in American history. He now becomes just another in a long line of reforming politicians who have failed to change the basic nature of America’s political party duopoly.  

Sadly, the negatives out-weigh the positives now. Basing his argument on the lesser evil Sanders has endorsed Biden for president. Sanders had spent months of giving speeches where he denounced Biden as a tool of the corporate elite in Wall Street and exposing his hawkish foreign policies. He condemned the greed and corruption of bought and paid for political power by the nation’s ruling elite. By endorsing Biden he has gravely diminished what he accomplished.

America is a plutocracy, which means a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich where politicians are financed by a select group of oligarchs. Always, there are groups in protest against some aspect or other of this social system. The energy and ingenuity they display in campaigns they consider important provides further proof that once working men and women get on the right track capitalism’s days are numbered. Enthusiasm is an excellent and valuable thing when rightly applied, but when it is wasted in fruitless directions it only leads to disheartenment and apathy. The WSPUS has resisted all attempts on the part of those on the Left to renounce its principles and in doing so has been accused dogmatism and sectarianism. This charge is seen by the WSPUS as badge of political honesty and sincerity; of persistence and perseverance. These are precious attributes. But the WSPUS needs more than that. It requires the understanding and cooperation of fellow workers and it is humble enough to admit that it has been lacking in this particular support. The World Socialist Party’s message has always been the same message – that the workers can just as easily run society for their own benefit. The focus of those in the socialist movement must now be to make it a more powerful factor in the years to come. 

A Way Forward

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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

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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.

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

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