Author: ajohnstone

Campaign from the left – Govern from the right!

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“…The masses must have time and opportunity to develop, and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement…”  Frederick Engels to the American socialists when the labor movement in New York City nominated the non-socialist reformer Henry George for mayor in 1886   If you are always complaining about the number of socialist, anti-capitalist and otherwise radical-left parties in the United States and keep wondering why when America is already well provided with a multiplicity of left-wing parties, why the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS) is added to this profusion of the confusion? The answer is there is no way of challenging and refuting the spurious programs of the parties which promise to reform capitalism except by building up from the ground an organization of socialists working only for socialism.


Joe Biden believes that capitalism can work if it is properly tethered and reined in. And we have a plethora of political commentators urging us that Biden is the best choice when the other option is Trump.

It is well worth offering the analysis of Eugene Debs when it comes to the US electoral circus.

“…Parties but express in political terms the economic interests of those who compose them. This is the rule. The Republican party represents the capitalist class, the Democratic party the middle class and the Socialist party the working class. There is no fundamental difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Their principles are identical. They are both capitalist parties and both stand for the capitalist system, and such differences as there are between them involve no principle but are the outgrowth of the conflicting interests of large and small capitalists…”

“…To the workers of the country these two parties in name are one in fact. They, or rather., it, stands for capitalism, for the private ownership of the means of subsistence, for the exploitation ol the workers, and for wage-slavery…”

In contrast to the capitalist parties he argues that:

“…Unlike the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties, the Socialist Party platform is a plain and simple declaration of principles and policies which all may understand. It was not framed merely with a view to winning votes. Its utterances are straightforward and to the point. There is no ambiguity; no evasion of vital issues; no possibility of double construction. There is no attempt to compromise with capitalism; no effort to throw a sop to the enemies of labor; no adherence to the miserable fiction that the interests of labor and capital are identical. The Socialist Party, in short, proposes to place the workers in possession of all the wealth they produce and to insure to every individual full and free opportunity to labor. The elector who casts his vote for its candidates may do so with the positive assurance that whenever the opportunity arises every pledge of the party platform will be carried out to the letter. The Socialist Party does not disguise the fact that its ultimate aim is the entire abolition of rent, interest, and profit…”

Radical activists do a disservice to Debs’ legacy and his commitment to working-class political independence. By trying to get Joe Biden to say and do what leftist want him to say and do, is to engage in a pathetic and puerile political ventriloquism. It is dependent politics, powerless politics. It is readily admitted by many in the liberal progressive movement that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by moneyed interests. And we know that the Democratic Party represents corporate interests. So no matter what the candidates say or do, they are still being controlled by the two-party system which is disempowering.

  Regardless that Biden may seem a genuine and honorable man to the electorate, once such a sincere person is elected to office in any government anywhere, they become the captive of capitalism, compelled by the system to represent the interests of the ruling class of the nation state, which ever nation state it happens to be. Some voters will respond, “surely, a little is better than nothing?” Except it will always result in nothing, because capitalism can never serve the exploited.

  The WSPUS espouse the theory that poverty, unemployment, racial oppression and environmental destruction are not simply side–effects of capitalism but are vital part of it. This is something that Eugene Debs understood only too very well. The membership of the WSPUS is minuscule, it is true, but there is no alternative to world socialism if the planet is to have a future.

Capitalism at Work

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 The Institute for Policy Studies shows that the dozen richest American billionaires now collectively own more than $1 trillion in wealth, a finding one analyst described as “a disturbing milestone in the U.S. history of concentrated wealth and power.”



 According to IPS, the 12 top U.S. billionaires have seen their combined wealth soar by 40%—or $283 billion—since the coronavirus began spreading rapidly across the U.S. in mid-March, sparking widespread economic shutdowns and mass job loss.



 “During the first stage of the pandemic, between January 1 and March 18, the collective wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen declined by $96 billion,” wrote IPS researchers Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo. “But their wealth quickly rebounded and surpassed their September 2019 Forbes 400 wealth level. The only exception is Warren Buffett, who is still $2 billion below his September 2019 wealth, but is currently worth $80 billion.”

Last Thursday, the billionaires’ combined wealth reached $1.015 trillion—the first time in U.S. history that the collective net worth of the top 12 American billionaires has topped the trillion-dollar mark. According to IPS, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth jump by $48.5 billion since mid-March, making him the “biggest pandemic profiteer” of the group.


“The total wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen is greater than the GDP of Belgium and Austria combined,” said Ocampo. “Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans are unemployed or living paycheck to paycheck, and 170,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States.”


“This is simply too much economic and political power in the hands of twelve people,” Collins, director of IPS’ Program on Inequality and the Common Good, said in a statement.


The dozen wealthiest U.S. billionaires and their respective net worth as of August 13 are:

Jeff Bezos—$189.5 billion Bill Gates—$114.1 billion Mark Zuckerberg—$95.5 billion Warren Buffett—$80.6 billion Elon Musk—$73.1 billion Steve Ballmer—$71.5 billion Larry Ellison—$70.9 billion Larry Page—$67.4 billion Sergey Brin—$65.6 billion Alice Walton—$62.6 billion Jim Walton—$62.3 billion Rob Walton—$62.03 billion https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/17/disturbing-milestone-just-12-us-billionaires-now-own-more-1-trillion-combined-wealth



Inequality in USA

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 For Every $100.00 in Median White Wealth, Black People Have $8.70


In 1968, it was $9.43. It keeps getting worse for beaten-down Americans. In the past twenty years, median income for Black households has dropped 5 percent while increasing 6 percent for White households. This year the Black and Latino communities have suffered the greatest effects of the coronavirus pandemic.


 Because of their job losses and lack of savings and inability to maintain rent payments, they will be taking the brunt of a growing housing crisis, especially in the big cities, where rent for Millennials is already over two-thirds of their incomes. Black and Latino households are also more like to face food insufficiencies. Yet the Trump administration recently considered cuts to the food stamp program.


After building their businesses on 70 years of taxpayer-funded research and development, Apple/Amazon/Google/Microsoft/Facebook have expanded their composite net worth to almost $7 trillion, while avoiding over a hundred billion dollars in taxes. 


Lockdown and locked out of school

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Lockdown widened learning gaps between richer and poorer primary school children, an analysis of thousands of families in England suggests.
Children from poorer families did at least one hour less learning a day compared with those in richer families, the Institute of Fiscal Studies found.
One head teacher says it could take up to two years to bring some children back to their correct attainment level.
The IFS surveyed the parents of 5,500 school-aged children in England during lockdown. It compared the richest 20% of pupils with the poorest 20%. In May, the IFS said children from wealthier families were spending more time studying during the pandemic than poorer children. And in its latest research, the think tank gives a more detailed picture of how coronavirus has widened the gap between the richest and poorest primary school children. Its findings suggest richer primary school children spent 75 minutes a day more on educational activities, compared with those in poorer families during lockdown.
Resources provided by schools are also unequally distributed, the IFS suggested. Around 42% of poorer primary-aged children received some sort of online lesson, conference call or support from their school, compared to 58% of richer children. And the IFS said it found evidence suggesting children who have had better access to learning resources are also more likely to spend more time learning than children who do not. 
Richer children were (37%) more likely to have their own space to study than their poorer counterparts. And although a large majority of children from all backgrounds had access to a computer or tablet, richer children were also more likely to have access to a computer or tablet.
Kirsty Tennyson is Executive Principal of the Three Saints Academy Trust and explained,  “In a deprived area there is already a gap that we’re striving to close – to narrow and ultimately to close the gap,” she says. “Children who have not got that support at home and have not been able to access that learning – that gap will have grown hugely.” She admits there is a mountain to climb. “This is going to take into this academic year and the one after to really get those children back to where they need to be and for some children it will take longer.”

Real Suffering in the UK

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Poverty and destitution. That’s the reality for thousands of migrants in the UK since the pandemic started.
As lockdown hit, migrants across the nation who often work in casual and low-paid roles saw their jobs disappear or incomes slashed. But unlike the rest of the country, they have no welfare safety net to fall back on, because a controversial immigration policy known as No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) means they cannot access benefits.
There are an estimated 1.4 million migrants to the UK from outside the EU who have visas subject to this rule, according to the Migration Observatory, at the University of Oxford.
These migrants cannot receive most government-funded benefits, including child benefit, child tax credits, council tax benefit and disability living allowance or even free school dinners for their children. As a last resort, many migrants are having to turn to charities for help.
The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) pointed out that,  “…we’ve seen an increase in people becoming street homeless, acutely hungry and not being able to afford even basic medication because they literally have no support available to them.”
Since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic, the Citizens Advice Bureau says it receives calls every 20 minutes from migrants desperate to access benefits.
The charity Khalsa Aid set up a food parcel delivery service soon after lockdown, responding to migrants on student visas and undocumented migrants who were struggling to feed themselves. The charity’s workers are delivering more than 200 food parcels each week. Not much but even a little helps.
Charities across the sector, the Local Government Association and the Work and Pensions Committee have recommended the government suspend NRPF altogether during the coronavirus crisis. MP Stephen Timms, who chairs the committee, says: “What we need is for the ‘no recourse to public funds’ restriction to be suspended for the duration of this crisis. So that hard-working, law-abiding families can apply for universal credit, just as three million other people have done since this crisis began.”
Home Secretary Priti Patel insists there are safeguards in place to support those affected and that the policy is in the public interest. Migrants who are applying for, or who have, leave to remain on family or private life grounds can apply to the Home Office for NRPF to be lifted. But the decision can take months.

Tougher at the bottom

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Researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) found that the most vulnerable groups in society have been hit hardest financially by Covid-19.



 Low-paid workers are three times more likely than their well-off counterparts to have seen their hours halved during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a study.




People who are young, low-paid, black, in self-employment, those who have low education levels or live in large families have been disproportionately affected by the recession, according to the analysis.
Long-term scars to people’s prospects may be even deeper than in past recessions, the researchers wrote.
They calculate that scarring will disproportionately impact groups that are already relatively disadvantaged. For employees who were earning less than £151 per week in February, the probability of being furloughed or having their hours cut by at least half almost three times higher than for those earning more than £600 per week (53.7 per cent compared to 18 per cent).
Black workers have also suffered relatively more – around 42 per cent were estimated to have been furloughed in June compared to 27.6 per cent of the total workforce.
Similarly, younger workers have seen their hours and earnings cut. Those aged 18-24 who were still employed in June were almost 18 per cent more likely than those aged 35-54 to have had their hours cut by at least half or to have been furloughed.
Individuals with only GCSE qualifications or equivalent are 17.1 per cent more likely to have been furloughed or lost at least half of working hours compared with those with a degree.
Professor Bell said: “Some individuals will be affected harder than others. We find those most likely to become unemployed are the young, those with a lower level of qualifications, black workers and those on low pay.”

Against Lesser Evilism

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A miner walking home after a long hard day down the pit. Being weary, he takes a short cut across a field.
Soon enough, he is approached by the land-owner. 
“You are trespassing on private land, this land belongs to me.”
The miner responds, “So, how did you come by all this land?”
“My family fought the indians and drove them away,” proudly says the land-owner.
“Okay, get your jacket off” replies the miner, “and I’ll fight you for it right now!”

Poverty persists deeply entrenched and pervasive in America, and it is not for lack of resources. For the large majority of African-American families, the ghettos of the civil rights era have been passed on from parents to children, with little change. No other advanced nation tolerates the depth of deprivation allowed in the United States. Among too many poor and minority Americans, voting and choosing elected officials just isn’t viewed as essential to their lives. Many families are deemed as “undeserving” and have experienced a decrease in assistance. But these crude distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor are unworthy of any progressive.

The World Socialist Party of the United States concedes that the majority of our fellow-workers are not yet class-conscious revolutionaries. Even for those who say they support socialism, most have little understanding of what it really is. They share with Bernie Sanders the view that socialism is a Scandinavian-style welfare state. A mixture of private ownership and government-run public services.  Many view socialism not as the dissolution of the State, but rather as an expansion of the scope of government. Clearly, we are very far from any sort of understanding that socialism means the end of capitalist commodity production for profit. Without a knowledge of the irreconcilable class conflict within capitalism there is little chance of political and economic transformation of society. People are not just asking to breathe; they are asking for a breath of fresh air and to breathe freely.

The World Socialist Party cannot subscribe to the idea that we should lay aside principles and refrain from criticism of Biden, the lesser evil. We are reminded of Howard Zinn’s observation on political power. “What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but “who is sitting in” — and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.”  

Endorsing candidates of capitalist parties muddies the truth that the system of capitalism itself is the real enemy of the working class. As socialists we know that no transformation of society has ever been achieved through reforms within the power structure of that society. Supporting (critically or with illusions or not) candidates of the parties of the capitalist class is deceptive because it implies that the system can be changed through such reforms as long as we elect the correct capitalist candidates. 

Without a clear socialist perspective, workers can be led to believe that supporting the Democratic Party will secure important gains for working people. The Democratic Party is called the “friend of labor” and the unions have given Democrats generous contributions in an attempt to buy favors’ Yet it is a capitalist party both in form and content. Biden heartily embraces capitalism.

Liberals and progressives will brag that Biden is the lesser evil when compared with Trump. But the results of the working class relying on the Democratic Party have been disastrous: The standard of living of the working class has been in a steady decline whether the Democrats or the Republicans held the reins of government. The objective role of the Democratic Party is to politically disarm the working class and keep it disorganized. Working within the Democratic Party and electing its presidential candidates who are content with reforming capitalism can only create barriers to building socialism. The working class must see its interests as directly opposed to those of the capitalist class. It must overthrow the capitalist class, take control of the state, and then proceed to construct a new society that operates in the interests of the vast majority.

American voters have permitted themselves to be convinced that electing a new president will change things. “It’s gonna be different this time.” is the refrain. But it won’t be. If Biden were actually to become President of the United States of America, it would hardly matter, for his freedom of action is too restricting and he would have very little option but to accommodate the capitalist class and their agenda. If he was elected there may be a number of cosmetic changes with implementation of some identity politics but the fundamental problem, capitalist property relations, would remain essentially unchanged. The Democratic Party (or as we like to describe them, the Damnocrats) is a party that calls for the reform, not the abolition of capitalism.  When the WSPUS speak of working class independent political action, we think in terms of class independence. In other words, a political party entirely under the control of working people, representing their interests and their interest alone.


The American working class have been fooled into accepting the concept of common interests wherein the problems of the capitalist class are theirs also. The suggestion is that people in the US all belong to one of the world’s mightiest military and industrial powers, sharing equally in the glory; so let’s all work still harder to increase the arms and wealth of the rulers. The belief that there exists a community of interests from which we all derive common benefits is a mistaken one but nevertheless held strongly.    Two crucial political fallacies permeate American workers thinking. First, that the present system can be so organized that it will operate in the interests of the majority, through a process of applied reformism; Secondly, that “proper leadership is an essential requirement.   However, neither will ever remove any of the major social evils and the socialist’s mission is to demonstrate that fact. 


Without vibrant grassroots movements changing reality, the oligarchs and plutocrats in power will keep trampling upon working people. We need BOTH activism on the streets demonstrating against specific grievances AND we need effective electoral action for social change.    A powerful socialist party should be the conduit for change. The street protests have often been aimed at the wrong target. A socialist party is an organization which can connect the dots between issues and movements — from winning justice for the oppressed to fighting for migrant rights to interacting with global environmental movements. We cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which we must battle.


Biden is not encouraging working people to do things for themselves. There was no thought given to constructing a real working-class movement but simply to encourage the unions and working people to remain an appendage to the Democratic Party. The goal is not to create a socialist society for the working class but to encourage the working class to build socialism for itself.


Socialism is not about fighting for reforms or crumbs from the bosses table. We need to organize independently of the capitalist class and their parties. We need to show the working class that we have strength and power on our own because we do. This is Socialism 101.

Supporting the candidates of capitalist parties weakens us. It ties our hands to the capitalist system to resolve our problems. It’s a dead end. Reformism is not the same as socialism. We can’t make that distinction clear if we lend our support to capitalist politicians. It is contradictory to support capitalist politicians while opposing capitalism. Any candidate representing the parties of the capitalist class represent the class enemy of the working class. Our political power is in our independence from the capitalist class and their political parties. Only by organizing independent, revolutionary socialist parties of the working class around the world can we will end capitalism and establish socialism everywhere and for everyone.

The East-Med Hotspot

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The Israeli cabinet last week approved a pipeline deal to move gas offshore via Cyprus to Greece and Europe. The 1,900-kilometer (1,181 miles) link will connect gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean basin to European markets. The $6 billion project, many years in the discussion, was boosted in January by an agreement signed in Athens between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Greek and Cypriot counterparts. The EastMed project puts Israel on a collision course with Turkey  which has laid claim, reinforced with a maritime deal with Libya, to large parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, where it is exploring for gas—and conducting naval exercises. These moves are exacerbating tensions with Greece.
Disputes over exploration rights and pipelines will add fuel to the heated rhetoric between the two countries. Turkish naval vessels harassed an Israeli research vessel near Cyprus last December, and Israel’s annual military assessment listed Turkey as a “challenge” for the first time last year. Egypt has its own claims to gas fields in the Eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus and Greece have already raised alarms over the Turkish-Libyan delineation of maritime rights, which intersects with the planned route for the EastMed pipeline.
For good measure, France’s President Emmanuel Macron has joined the issue, calling for European Union sanctions against Turkey over what he described as “violations” of the sovereignty of Cyprus and Greece. Israel’s main interest in the Mediterranean is to build on alliances with Greece and Cyprus that has grown over the past few decades. This dovetails with the interests of Egypt and France—which, along with the United Arab Emirates, are also anxious about Turkey’s military involvement in the Libyan civil war. Israeli-Greek military relations have deepened recently. Greece has signed a deal to lease Israeli drones, and Israeli Air Force jets have participated in a major Greek military exercise. Israeli-Greek military cooperation is a frequent topic of discussion at Israeli policy discussions and think-tanks. Israel is taking delivery of new Sa’ar 6 class corvettes and will eventually build new Reshef class combat vessels to protect its exclusive economic zone.
 Russia has opened a natural-gas link to Turkey through the Turkstream pipeline, causing concern in Washington about Russian inroads into Europe, via Turkey. 

The Rich Get Richer

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 America’s 12 wealthiest now control $1 trillion of wealth. 



 Between 1980 and 2018, tax law changes favoring the nation’s rich left our billionaires paying 79 percent less in taxes, as measured as a share of their wealth. 



 The country’s top .01 percent, a group consisting of households with wealth in excess of $100 million, have seen their tax payments as a share of their wealth drop by almost as much, 73 percent.



 An ultra-wealthy household that realizes $25 million in tax savings doesn’t rush out and spend that extra $25 million on food, home improvements, or new clothes. Most of those added millions just add to that ultra-wealthy household’s wealth and future wealth.



 The share of America’s wealth that our top .01 percent hold has quadrupled, rising from 2.3 percent in 1980 to 9.6 percent in 2018. 



 The incomes of the top .01 percent of our nation’s investors have, over the same years, jumped from 1.5 percent to 4.6 percent.

Making billions V making ends meet

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Inequality was a pre-existing condition for the US economy long before the coronavirus started its spread. The pandemic has merely exposed its “ugly face”.



  It took developer Joe Farrell just one day to rent Sandcastle, his 15-bedroom mansion with sunken tennis courts in the wealthy enclave of The Hamptons, for $2m for the summer to “a textile tycoon and his family who were stuck in Manhattan and wanted to leave the city on a day’s notice. 



 Stock markets are setting new highs driven by soaring prices for the tech companies that enable those lucky enough to work from home. Apple is close to being valued at $2tn. The total wealth of US billionaires has soared $685bn since the middle of March to a combined $3.65tn. 



 Rock-bottom interest rates have triggered a home sales boom for some as those with the money reconsider their priorities in the work-from-home era. With nowhere to go, those Americans who can are saving at record rates.



 “We are all in this together” may be the rallying cry for the pandemic but the truth is the poor, and particularly people of color, have been devastated by coronavirus and its attendant recession while the wealthy have weathered it and in some cases made huge gains.



 Meanwhile roughly 30 million people are unemployed in the US, about 20% of the workforce. Almost 30 million Americans recently reported that they have not had enough to eat at some point in the previous seven days. The vast majority – about 26 million – had lower rates of educational attainment.

The recession has also further exposed the racial wealth gap. The job market ticked up again last month but 14.6% of Black and 12.9% of Latinx adults were unemployed in July, versus 9.2% of whites.
Only one in four Americans can work from home. 
“It’s white-collar professionals who are able to work from home. In some ways, this is a sign that the economy is just officially split in two,” Glenn Kelman, chief executive of property company Redfin, told NPR.
For people able to work from home, “life has returned largely to normal”, said Peter Atwater, adjunct lecturer in the economics department at William & Mary. “In fact, the wealthiest today are even richer than they were before the outbreak.”
Economists often talk of V-shaped economic recoveries, a sharp drop and an equally sharp bounce back. Sometimes the economy drags along the bottom before bouncing back – a U-shaped recovery. Now there is talk of a “K-shaped” recovery. A fall followed by a split where the well off and well educated tick up while the poor and poorly educated fall further behind.
For those people, on the arm of the K, Atwater said it’s “almost as if the outbreak never happened. That’s starkly different for people on the leg. If you are a small business person, work in the service industry, had to go back out into a manufacturing facility, a job in the ‘real world’, as it were, that has weighed heavily. Sadly it has weighed particularly heavily on minority communities at a time when they are the largest populations experiencing the outbreak. It’s a stacked inequity.”
“We talk about the American dream, the ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Rags to riches. All this American mythology is being challenged by this extraordinary wealth divide,” said Atwater. “The rubber band has been pulled too far. People are uncomfortable with how divided we have become. At the same time I don’t think the wealthy appreciate how vulnerable they are to those who are out in the real world. They are not immune to the world around them.”

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

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