The charity National Energy Action warned the number of UK households living in fuel poverty could climb to 6 million, the highest level on record.

Around 4 million homes in the UK were already classed as fuel poor before a surge in global energy market prices triggered one of the steepest ever energy bill hikes in October, but campaigners are braced for a record increase in the numbers unable to pay their energy bills following another hike this Spring that could cause at least another 2 million more homes to slip into fuel poverty.

Adam Scorer, chief executive of National Energy Action, said “Those on lowest incomes and in less-efficient homes will not just face financial hardship but intolerable living conditions, ill-health and, for too many, a shortened life,” Scorer said. “This is not just conjecture. It will happen and we’ve had enough time to see it coming and act.”

6m UK homes may be unable to pay energy bills after price hike, charity warns | Fuel poverty | The Guardian

 “Revolutions must take place in the mind before they can be carried out on the streets.”

“The new social organism cannot be the work of one single person, nor of a few people…It is the work of everyone…The river thus slowly takes shape from the confluence of a thousand springs, of billions of drops of water.”

“Schools, books, the printed word – these are the real revolutionary agents…teachers are the only true revolutionaries.”

Auguste Blanqui

The continuing pandemic, the endless wars, the persistent poverty and the deepening ecological cataclysms should not offer socialists very much hope that change is coming. But we shall not cease our campaign to end capitalism and bring about socialism. We do still possess hope that working people can build a better world for the common good and the well-being of all. We cannot go on the way we are going. People will eventually come to understand that and will avert the dystopian future scenarios sci-fi writers’ careers have flourished upon.

We are confident that our fellow workers who puzzle over the question of why when our technology can produce so much, how is it that we ourselves get so little? Eventually, workers will ask if we produce a thousand-fold more social wealth than our great-grandfathers could why is it we still suffer from scarcity. 

Socialists are convinced that in due time, the working class will come to the conclusion that the reasons are the world’s great productive system is owned by a handful of people who run it for their own profit and not for people’s use. And it can only operate in the interests of everybody when society as a whole collectively owns and runs it.

Most people know the present system is rotten and harmful by their own experience of economic insecurity. But they still have not arrived at the socialist answer. The answer will not be reached through hopelessness and despair but by mankind’s reasoning process. As the capitalist system continues on its road towards chaos and civilisation collapse, our need for solidarity and resistance will only increase. The means of production will be taken over by the communities and re–purposed for human needs. The enormous reservoir of talent and creativity will be released to build a new world. The knowledge and resources are there to be applied.

For socialists, our future task is largely a question of whether we can begin engaging the union movement, the social movements, and radicals in challenging capitalism. We have to be able to argue that capitalism is bad even when it is working well, that capitalism is now a barrier to human development.  We need to recognise that we’re fighting capitalism. What socialists have to offer is making connections between working people across workplaces, across countries, bringing a class analysis so they understand it’s not just them. We can never win if it’s just a few of us against the State. Fellow workers have to see there’s actually a class and offer them some historical memory, so they see how workers did in the past. Giving them some comparative analysis of what’s going on — how did people organise. Our policy is to be a bridge—responding to practical and immediate things, but putting them into a larger context. Because without that larger context we’re losing and we’re going to continue to lose.

The social revolution we are calling for is a simple thing. It is the devolution of all power into the hands of the working people. It is bottom-up, industrial democracy, with decision-making power being exclusively the prerogative of workers in their workplaces and communities, confederated one to another in such ways as they see fit. The social revolution is the full and final emancipation of labour, all labour. Revolution, real revolution, is affected by the workers themselves.

Given the conscious control of human affairs that a socialist system would implement, people in socialism would be able to take charge of their destiny. What is undeniable is that we are a species with great talents. In science, technology, art, crafts and design we can call upon a wide range of great skills. The point now is to carry out the revolution for the benefit of humanity and a new era for humanity will have begun.

 “We’re not trying to make money. We just want to see people get vaccinated.”

Cobervax is an open-source alternative to Big Pharma’s patent-protected vaccines. Instead of being produced for profit, this shot could ultimately be manufactured around the world and made cheaply available to all.

Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston’s Baylor College, and the Indian pharmaceutical company Biological E. Limited says the new vaccine is at least 90% effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and 80% or more effective against its Delta variant. The ambition is to create a low-cost, open-source alternative to expensive and limited-supply mRNA vaccines for developing and under-vaccinated countries. 

Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi won’t personally profit from vaccine which they were instrumental in developing.

“Our Texas Children’s Center does not plan to make money on this, it’s a gift to the world.”

Texas Team Applauded for Giving What Big Pharma Refuses: A Patent-Free Vaccine to the World (commondreams.org)

No true Christian can remain indifferent while hundreds of thousands of his or her Christian brothers and sisters are ill-fed, badly housed, illiterate, and without proper medical care. 

Pained by the sight of so much suffering, Christians must turn to socialism as the solution.

 Capitalism, the system under which we are now living, may be described as a way of life in which, “One soweth, and another reapeth”(John: 4; 37). 

Well might we say to the wealthy few who own our large estates and factories what Jesus said to his disciples:

 “you…reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor”(John: 4; 38).

 The capitalists cease from resting only to eat, while you cease from working only to rest, and eat only when you can. 

Do you believe that Jesus favoured such injustice, he who said, “by their fruits ye shall know them”(Mathew: 7; 20)? 

The fruits of capitalism can be seen even by the blind; they are poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, crime, greed, and disease. Could Jesus have wanted us to live like this?

 Millions of families are facing a “year of the squeeze” in 2022, the Resolution Foundation predicts. According to the Resolution Foundation, millions of families are facing a “cost-of-living catastrophe” next year.

Resolution Foundation chief executive Torsten Bell, said: “The overall picture is likely to be one of prices surging and pay packets stagnating. In fact, real wages have already started falling, and are set to go into next Christmas barely higher than they are now.” “

Higher energy bills, stagnant wages and tax rises could leave households with a £1,200 a year cut to their incomes. A 1.25% increase in National Insurance contributions will cost the average household £600 a year while the higher energy bills cap – which comes into force in April – is expected to add an additional £500 to spending. The impact of the failure of firms in the energy sector would see another £100 added to energy bills. In recent months, wholesale gas prices have risen to unprecedented levels. Last week, they hit a new record of 450p per therm, which experts think could take average annual gas bills to about £2,000 next year. Meanwhile, the cost of living in the UK surged by 5.1% in the 12 months to November – the highest increase in 10 years – Office for National Statistics data showed. Inflation is set to peak at 6% in the spring.

The Resolution Foundation warn that real wage growth, which was flat in October, “almost certainly started falling last month and is unlikely to start growing again until the final quarter of 2022”. The Foundation said wage growth had stalled in 2021 and in real terms wages were likely to fall for most of 2022. It forecast a rise of 0.1% over the year, once inflation was taken into account, but said it expected that by the end of 2024 real wages would be £740 a year lower than if the UK’s pre-pandemic pay growth had continued.

UK households warned of ‘year of the squeeze’ as cost of living soars | Household bills | The Guardian

 According to the American Trucking Associations, the lobbying organization for large trucking employers, the US has a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers. This claim has been repeated consistently over the years and has recently been cited by industry groups in favor of a bill in Congress to lower the commercial driver’s license age requirement from 21 to 18. 

But truck drivers are quick to highlight the low pay, poor treatment and tough working conditions they endure throughout the industry as prevailing issues for employers who claim to have trouble finding and retaining enough drivers.

“The industry has recycled this narrative about every three months for over 20 years. There is no truck driver shortage,” said Desiree Wood, the president of Real Women in Trucking. “It is indeed a pay shortage and work conditions issue.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics published an article in March 2019 discussing the widespread and constant claims of labor shortages in the trucking industry, but found that if wages rise in the industry, any long-term labor shortages would be improved. “As a whole, the market for truck drivers appears to work as well as any other blue-collar labor market,” the report concluded.

Nearly 2 million Americans work as truck drivers, a rate that has steadily increased over the years from about 1.57 million truck drivers in 2000. States issue more than 450,000 commercial driver’s licenses per year.

While more Americans are working as truck drivers, wages have drastically declined since the passage of the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, which deregulated the US trucking industry.

When adjusted for inflation, median wages for truck drivers in 1980 were about $110,000 annually. In 2020, median annual wages for truck drivers were $47,130. Nearly 40% of US truck drivers were covered by union contracts in 1983, which dropped to 10.1% in 2020.

 Many trucking companies also misclassify drivers as independent contractors, shifting overhead costs on to workers and burdening them with massive amounts of debt for their vehicles, gas and fees.

Billy Randel, chief organizer of Truckers Movement for Justice, explained that most truck drivers work 60 to 70 hours a week without overtime pay, as many of the hours are unpaid wait times, from waiting to load and unload, to department of transportation inspections, or having to clean out trailers before picking up a new load.

“We’re fed up and we’re tired of having no voice and we’re the power in the industry. Nothing moves without us,” said Randel. “There are too many drivers out here who are homeless and they stay on the road because they have no place to live. There are too many drivers that actually qualify for federal food-stamp assistance. We want to end the sharecropping outright, and take back the power drivers once had when we were organized many decades ago.”

‘This used to be a great job’: US truckers driven down by long hours and low pay | US economy | The Guardian

 “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Births in Italy last year hit their lowest level since the unification of the nation in 1861, the national statistics office said this month, with the figure falling for a 12th consecutive year.

There were 404,892 births in Italy last year, the ISTAT statistics office said, down 15,192 from 2019. There were 746,146 deaths in 2020 as the population fell to 59.3 million.

ISTAT said the slump in births had continued this year.

Pope says Italy’s plunging birthrate is a ‘tragedy’ (yahoo.com)

Donald Trump still struts on the American political scene. It seems probable that he will stand again for president in 2024. This article considers one important aspect of his popular appeal – his ‘blue-collar’ image.  

In 2018 a book appeared entitled Trump, The Blue-Collar President. The author, financier Anthony Scaramucci, who served as the White House Director of Communications in July 2017, highlights the absurdity of the image he himself helped create by crowning ‘the Billionaire Blue-Collar President.’ Not for a single day has Trump ever been a blue-collar or even a white-collar worker. His only work experience before entering politics was as a dealer in real estate. In office he consistently pursued policies extremely favorable to business and the wealthy. 

And yet Trump did to some extent succeed in creating an image of himself as a friend of blue-collar workers. How did he perform this astonishing feat?

One thing he did that helped enormously was tapping into the long American tradition of anti-intellectualism. Let me explain how this works. 

Substitute targets

Life as a wage-slave – the humiliation of abject dependence on an employer, the unfree nature of work for a boss, the unending struggle to make ends meet, the pressure of competition – is bound to generate suppressed or open feelings of resentment, anger, and hostility. Politicians and propagandists for the capitalist class strive to prevent such feelings from striking home against their masters by redirecting them toward other targets. 

A variety of substitute targets are available. Foreign powers are an old standby, as are ethnic, racial, and religious minorities. In a previous article I discussed the retargeting of hostility against welfare recipients or ‘the poor,’ pictured as feckless parasites living off a hardworking ‘middle class.’ Another substitute target much favored by ‘right-wing’ demagogues is people with higher education, academics, and intellectuals, often lumped together as ‘the liberal intellectual elite’ (obscuring the existence of conservative intellectuals).

Richard Hofstadter, author of a classical study of anti-intellectualism in the United States,[1] speaks of ‘the traditional businessman’s suspicion of experts working in any area outside his control, whether in scientific laboratories, universities, or diplomatic corps.’ In fact, capitalists exert a considerable degree of control even in these spheres: over universities, scientific institutes, and many other organizations by means of financial support and seats on boards of trustees, over diplomacy by means of participation in closed forums like the Council on Foreign Relations. But no doubt anything less than complete and direct control causes them some discomfort. They are fully conscious of themselves as a ruling class, and whatever is outside their control is a potential threat to their position.[2]

One anomaly in the position of the capitalists is that despite their enormous economic and political power they do not monopolize social status or prestige, which can also be won through achievement in science or the arts.[3] In some ways this is a weakness, but it enables capitalists to retarget popular resentment against intellectual and cultural elites that they view as potential rivals. 

Is it not a bit risky for members of one extremely wealthy and powerful elite to play the card of anti-elitism against other elites? Might it not suggest questions about their own anti-elitist credentials? Apparently not.

In general, lies are more convincing when they contain a grain of truth. Thus, some welfare recipients do obtain benefits by means of fraud, although their sponging hardly bears comparison with the gross parasitism of the capitalists who denounce them. Here again, the scapegoating of intellectuals works because the poorly educated do have grounds to resent those more highly educated than themselves. They are resented for their pretensions of cultural, intellectual, and moral superiority, because they look down on people who lacked their own educational opportunities. At best they feel patronized, at worst they are mocked and ridiculed. This may hurt even more than economic exploitation. 

The special appeal of Donald Trump to the poorly educated has been analyzed in these terms by Janet McIntosh.[4] She criticizes commentators who mock Trump’s style because it lacks polish and is marked by disorganized syntax, spelling and grammatical mistakes, idiosyncratic use of punctuation and capital letters, limited vocabulary, and overuse of intensifiers [words like ‘very’].

Such mockery evokes sympathy for Trump among poorly educated voters, who may remember being ridiculed for similar stylistic shortcomings by sarcastic schoolteachers. 

Identity politics

This brings us to another reason why Trump was able to create a ‘blue-collar’ image for himself. The sole alternative to Trump and the Republicans offered by the two-party electoral system and the corporate media is the Democratic Party establishment, represented – as McIntosh notes – by ‘liberal politicians like Hillary Clinton,’ who ignore ‘the economic grievances, wage insecurity, and working and housing conditions’ of workers, especially white workers, thereby driving them into the Trump camp.

Of course, there are other voices, outside the establishment, ours among them, that do not ignore the problems faced by workers. But these voices are excluded from the mass media and are rarely if ever heard by the majority of Americans. The far-reaching alternatives that they offer do not appear ‘practical’ or ‘realistic.’

This problem is exacerbated by the rise of the trend known as ‘identity politics’ and its speech code of ‘political correctness.’ This trend concerns itself with several kinds of social injustice – above all, racism, sexism, the oppression of sexual minorities, and prejudice against the handicapped. The set of issues addressed has expanded over time and will probably continue to do so. An attempt is made to combine the various issues in accordance with the principle of ‘intersectionality.’ 

Matters of class, however, receive little attention in identity politics. At best, ‘classism’ is tagged on at the end of a list that starts with racism and sexism and includes heterosexism, able-ism, age-ism, and so on, without recognizing that class is central to the whole structure of social inequality, the grid on which other forms of inequality are measured. Usually, however, class is ignored altogether, producing a grotesquely distorted view of society, as when a destitute white heterosexual man is considered more privileged than a wealthy black lesbian. At worst, identity politics merges with the dominant culture in the worship of capitalist ‘success’ and idolization of black, female, and gay celebrities who have ‘made it.’   

Many blue-collar workers share Trump’s scornful rejection of ‘political correctness.’ As McIntosh puts it, they feel offended when ‘hyper-educated liberals’ assume that they are prejudiced against nonwhites, women, or gays just because they ‘do not know the new lingo and have not cultivated exquisite verbal sensitivity.’ 

Effective opposition to demagogues like Trump will never come from the ‘liberal left’ of the Democratic Party establishment and its tame media, but only from a movement that offers the working class a real alternative to capitalism. 

Notes

[1] Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, first published in 1966. The most recent edition was released by Vintage in 2012.

[2] However, the anti-intellectualism of ‘the traditional businessman’ is not shared by high-tech entrepreneurs, who are highly educated and may fear that they themselves will become targets of anti-intellectual demagogy.

[3] Academic honors are more prestigious in some countries than others (more in Germany than in the United States, for instance). 

[4] Janet McIntosh and Norma Mendoza-Denton, eds., Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies, Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 9-18.

Stephen Shenfield

 Farmworkers in the US, especially immigrant workers, have few protections. They were excluded from the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Workers in America’s agricultural fields are regularly subjected to abuses ranging from high occurrences of sexual assault and harassment, wage theft and safety issues including injuries, fatalities on the job, and exposure to hazardous chemicals.

The H2-A visa program is an often used avenue for exploitation of migrant workers in the US, as it ties immigration status to employment on a temporary basis with no pathways to permanent citizenship. Many of these workers are forced to take on debt to recruiters to enter the H2-A visa program, with several cases of debt peonage, forced labor, and human trafficking reported through the program.

“It’s really the structure of the program that facilitates this kind of stuff happening, often with impunity,” said Daniel Costa, director of Immigration Law and Policy Research at the Economic Policy Institute.

He cited a severe lack of labor law enforcement in the agricultural industry as a driving factor in widespread abuses of workers, and the lack of regulating recruiters outside of the US who connect migrant workers with temporary jobs. Inspections conducted by the wage and hour division of the US Department of Labor declined significantly over the past few decades due to underfunding, and the low number of inspectors responsible for overseeing a vast number of employers.

“If you’re an agricultural employer, there’s only around a 1% chance that you’ll be investigated for anything in any given year, so they can pretty much get away with not treating your workers the way they should,” added Costa.

In June, farmworkers from Mexico were transported through a trafficking network from Monterey to work on farms in Georgia. They paid the traffickers 20,000 pesos, about $950, loaned from their mother, taking frequent trips back and forth to Monterey, before being told it was safe to leave. Then they were finally transported across the border.

Initially, the worker was told they would be working on a blueberry farm, but was sent to a corn-farming operation instead.

“We arrived at the house where we would live and had to clean the rooms ourselves. There were roaches, spiders, mosquitoes, and the mattresses were covered in lice,” the worker said. “The bathrooms and showers were dirty and clogged. The kitchen was horrible. We had no air conditioning in hot weather.”

The worker began work daily at 3 or 4am and worked until 3 or 4pm with just one 15-minute lunch break, making just $225 for 15 days of work. Some of the workers were promised up to $12 an hour in pay but instead were ordered by armed overseers to dig up onions by hand for $0.20 per bucket.

After 20 days at the corn farm, the worker was sent to a cucumber warehouse where they weren’t paid anything for their work and then transferred to Texas before escaping the operation and returning to Mexico in July.

‘A lot of abuse for little pay’: how US farming profits from exploitation and brutality | US news | The Guardian