34,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers prepare to strike on Monday.

Semanu Mawugbe, a Kaiser nurse in Los Angeles explained, “It’s a slap in the face,” he said, noting that the 1%-a-year offer was well below this year’s 5%-plus inflation rate. “They tell us we’re heroes and we’re much appreciated because of everything we did during the pandemic”, he said. “But their offer shows they don’t mean it. We’re the ones who sustained the hospitals and took care of the sick like it’s a war zone…None of us want a strike, but there are times it has to be done,” he said. “We’re hoping for a last-minute, 11th-hour turnaround.”

The unions say Kaiser is seeking to squeeze wages when the non-profit company is doing well, with $45bn in cash reserves and $6.8bn in operating profits the last three years.

Denise Duncan, president of the United Nurses union, called Kaiser’s offer “totally unacceptable”. She derided the proposal to pay new workers less: “You can’t solve a nursing shortage that way.” She faulted Kaiser’s wage survey, saying it should have been done in cooperation with Kaiser’s unions. She said the survey, comparing Kaiser’s pay levels with those at smaller, less sophisticated medical institutions, often in rural areas, was apples and oranges. 

“Ultimately, we just had to pull our levers for a strike”, Duncan told the Guardian. “Our members were angry. Everyone worked so hard. We feel Kaiser let our principles of partnership go.”

‘A slap in the face’: nurses’ strike signals Kaiser’s end as union haven | US unions | The Guardian

 As the disillusioned environmentalists and disappointed COP26 delegates begin to depart Glasgow, what can we say except that our aim still remains one of achieving the socialist principle, ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ – free access – or post-scarcity socialism to reword the title of a Murray Bookchin’s book.

The World Socialist Movement (WSM) has always held that a society of abundance for all is possible and can be quickly turned into a reality. The fact that science and technology have developed to the point where it could be applied to produce enough for everybody to be able to satisfy their material needs strengthens the case for socialism. If the technological preconditions exist in today’s world but what is lacking is the required vast popular movement to bring such a society into being.

How much is too much? Some futurist scenarios are built upon the assumptions that people want luxury and that they detest work. We suggest that neither of these is fully correct and take their reasoning from projecting the capitalist ethos into non-market and not–for–profit economic system.  

Our critics claim that there are no other alternatives for the allocation of resources other than prices calculated by the free market or determined centrally by a command economy.

Our critics remain fixated on what we can call the ‘Lazy, Greedy Hypothesis’ which simply preaches the conventional capitalist wisdom about peoples ‘selfishness’, rejecting a system that abolishes the money, prices and exchange economy on the grounds that a money-free scheme would permit the least social conscious, those without any sense of social responsibility to ‘win’ out because they will take more from society and give less to the community becoming anti-social parasites and free riders. Are some innately selfish and inherently idle?

We say no and don’t share this pessimistic view. We have always thought we left ‘Original Sin’ to the blinkered religious believers, not for the progressive-minded to accept.

People behave differently depending upon the conditions that they live in. Although in today’s world working equates to mindless repetitive drudgery there is much more to hard work than that as demonstrated by the long waiting lists to enjoy the sweat of digging at one’s allotment. Working people develop deep friendships with co-workers when they engage in social production.

Human behaviour reflects society. In a society such as capitalism, people’s needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure. People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is organised in such a dog-eat-dog manner. In capitalist society a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the accumulation of possessions and conspicuous consumption.

As Marx contended, the prevailing ideas of society are those of its ruling class then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so deep-rooted.

 In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one’s command would be a meaningless concept. Why take more than you need when you can freely take what you need? In socialism, the only way in which individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to society, and the more the movement for socialism grows the more will it subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic notion of status, in particular. How can the status of conspicuous consumption be used as a reward as it is now for a privileged elite when all have equal free access.

In free access socialism, the notion of income or purchasing power would be devoid of meaning. So, therefore, would the notion of status be based upon the conspicuous consumption of wealth because individuals would stand in equal relation to the means of production and have free access to goods and services.

Under capitalism, there is a very large industry devoted to creating needs. Capitalism requires consumption, whether it improves our lives or not, and drives us to consume up to, and past, our ability to pay for that consumption. In a system of capitalist competition, there is a built-in tendency to stimulate demand to a maximum extent. Enterprises, for example, need to persuade customers to buy their products or they go out of business. They would not otherwise spend the vast amounts they do spend on advertising.

Socialism requires that we appreciate what is meant by ‘enough’ and that we do not project onto it the insatiable consumerism of capitalism. Socialism presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement and a profound change in social outlook. It is simply not reasonable to suppose that the desire for socialism on what it entails on the part of all concerned, would not influence the way people behaved in socialism and towards each other. Would they want to jeopardise the new society they had helped create? Socialists very much doubt it.

Socialism does not require self-sacrifice and for all of us to become altruists, placing the interests of others above our own. Socialism doesn’t require people to be any more humane than they are today. We will still be concerned primarily with ourselves, with satisfying our needs, our need to be respected and appreciated by others as well as our requirement for companionship and sexual intimacy. No doubt too, we will wish to ‘possess’ personal belongings, and seek to feel secure in accommodation, but this will be just that – our home and not a financial asset. Such ‘selfish’ behaviour will still exist in socialism but the acquisitiveness encouraged by capitalism will no longer exist.

The coming of socialism will not require great changes in the way we behave, essentially only the accentuation of some of the behaviours which people exhibit today (friendliness, helpfulness, co-operation) at the expense of other more negative ones which capitalism encourages. 

A sense of mutual obligations and the realisation of universal interdependency arising from this would profoundly colour people’s perceptions and influence their behaviour in such a society. We may thus characterise such a society as being built around mutual aid and a system of generalised reciprocity.

 “COP26 is a performance. It’s an illusion constructed to salvage capitalist economy rooted in resource extraction & colonialism. I didn’t come here to fix the agenda, I came here to disrupt it. I’m not going to my coloniser for solutions” – Ta’Kaiya Blaney, 19, a member of Canada’s Tla’Amin First Nation

 “COP26 is a performance. It’s an illusion constructed to salvage capitalist economy rooted in resource extraction & colonialism. I didn’t come here to fix the agenda, I came here to disrupt it. I’m not going to my coloniser for solutions” – Ta’Kaiya Blaney, 19, a member of Canada’s Tla’Amin First Nation

 According to the most recent data, governments are planning to produce 57% more oil, 71% more gas and 240% more coal than is consistent with a 1.5°C target by 2030. 

To even have half a chance of keeping 1.5°C alive, at least 60% of oil and gas and 90% of coal must remain in the ground

 Graduates from poorer backgrounds earn half as much as their more privileged peers in their first job after university because they put themselves forward for fewer roles and lack the family connections and financial support to hunt for top jobs, a survey of 5,000 graduates suggested. 

Those whose parents held professional roles, including chief executives, doctors and teachers, earned an average of £23,457 in their first job after university, compared with just £11,595 among those whose parents held technical, manual or service jobs.

“The stark reality is where you grew up and what your parents did still has an impact on your opportunities and your earning potential,” said Sarah Atkinson, the chief executive of the Social Mobility Foundation. She said wealthier graduates tended to benefit from being able to “hold out for the job and salary” they wanted, as well as having the confidence to aim higher in job applications. They are also better at negotiating over salary, and able to leverage unpaid work experience to start at a higher level, she added.

 After university, poorer graduates applied for an average of six jobs compared with nine for their wealthier peers, the figures showed.

The report showed that more privileged graduates were 47% more likely to use family connections to find their first job. This was especially the case for top earners: of those who earned more than £50,000, 61% said family, friends or former colleagues had helped them to secure a job, compared with just 35% of people earning less than £50,000.

Privileged graduates were also twice as likely to receive financial support during the job-hunting process, enabling them to undertake more unpaid work experience placements. They were also more confident they would find a job they wanted (71% compared with 50%) and benefited from cultural advantages such as taking inspiration from their parents’ professions in their job search.

Willingness to move was also identified as a barrier in the report, with just 64% of poorer graduates open to relocating compared with 76% of their more privileged peers. Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tended to look for roles in the areas in which they grew up, where they often found a lack of jobs that matched their skill set. The report suggested this could be due to anxieties about the cost of moving to and living in bigger cities.

Disadvantaged graduates earn half as much as privileged peers in first job | Job hunting | The Guardian

 “…We see business leaders and investors flying into Cop on private jets. We see them making fancy speeches. We hear about new pledges and promises. We are drowning in promises. Promises will not stop the suffering of people. Only immediate and drastic action will pull us back from the abyss. It’s hard to believe business and finance leaders when they haven’t delivered before. We simply don’t believe it…” – Vanessa Nakate

“Despite the ever-increasing numbers of vaccines produced, both states and pharmaceutical companies are continuing to fail to guarantee fair access to lifesaving medicines for all,” Amnesty’s briefing explains. “Pfizer, one the largest and most profitable vaccine developers… has delivered in excess of 1.8 billion doses to date,” the publication continues. “Despite its many pledges—some misleadingly phrased—Pfizer… continues to reserve the bulk of its vaccines for higher-income countries.”

96% of people in low-income countries remain unvaccinated.

Pfizer expects to earn 36 billion dollars in vaccine sales this year alone, has distorted reality to benefit its corporate image. Pfizer claimed it is “committed to sharing our scientific tools and insights, development expertise, and manufacturing capacity,” yet the company has opposed sharing of intellectual property through the WHO’s Covid-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). The company is still refusing to participate in technology sharing initiatives, such as the South African-based [World Health Organization] mRNA technology hub, and has lobbied vigorously against efforts to lift intellectual property restrictions, proposals put forward by India and South Africa to the World Trade Organization Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to suspend critical intellectual property provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, 

“Pfizer is still putting profits before people,” Amnesty charges.

Pfizer vaccines language is misleading.” The briefing asserts “Pfizer has amalgamated low, lower-middle, and upper-middle countries—over 84% of the global population—into one group and referred to them as ‘low and middle-income.’ Within this very broad category, the bulk of Pfizer’s doses have in fact been going to ‘upper-middle’ income countries such as Malaysia, Mexico, and Thailand.”

Pfizer said it had shipped two billion vaccine doses by the end of September, but only 154 million doses, or less than 8% of its total—had been sent to 42 low and lower-middle-income countries, and that less than 10% of those shots had gone to low-income countries.

Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty’s head of business and human rights, said in a statement Thursday that “Pfizer says it is committed to supplying doses to low- and middle-income countries, but the numbers just don’t bear this out. The fact is that this company is still putting profits first. As much as these companies might want to massage the facts, the numbers are crystal clear..”

Shame on those countries hoarding vaccines, shame on Big Pharma prioritizing profits over people. Shame on both for blocking attempts to increase vaccine production.

Pfizer Misleading World With False Claims of Equitable Vaccine Distribution: Amnesty (commondreams.org)