American Despair (book review)
Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row—a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times.
In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year—and they’re still rising.
In their book ‘Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism’ Anne Case and Angus Deaton paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today’s America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair.
Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190785/deaths-of-despair-and-the-future-of-capitalism
Universal Credit – Sanctions to return
In March the government announced that the requirement for people receiving universal credit to prove that they are looking for work – which would currently apply to more than 2 million people on the benefit – would be paused for three months due to the coronavirus pandemic. The government has now refused to extend the suspension on benefit sanctions beyond June.
Lifting the ban now threatens to place millions of people in an “untenable situation”. People who were shielding or suffered from underlying health conditions would face an “uphill struggle” to find suitable work – and may potentially accept jobs that place their health at risk in order to avoid benefit sanctions.
There were also mounting concerns that ongoing disruption to schools and childcare options mean people may need to care for their children during the time they could otherwise spend working or applying for jobs, which could result in them being sanctioned.
Lifting the ban now threatens to place millions of people in an “untenable situation”. People who were shielding or suffered from underlying health conditions would face an “uphill struggle” to find suitable work – and may potentially accept jobs that place their health at risk in order to avoid benefit sanctions.
There were also mounting concerns that ongoing disruption to schools and childcare options mean people may need to care for their children during the time they could otherwise spend working or applying for jobs, which could result in them being sanctioned.
Alison Garnham, chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, told The Independent that it was “way too soon” to end the suspension of conditionality and sanctions for people claiming universal credit.
“The assumption that people need to be pushed into job search through the threat of reducing their already low income is ridiculous when what they really need is support.”
Brian Dow, deputy chief executive at Rethink Mental Illness, echoed her concerns, and added, “Given the sharp rise in unemployment and substantial fall in job vacancies, reinstating it would only exacerbate the anxiety and stress of those who have been supported by universal credit during the pandemic, including those managing long term health conditions or a severe mental illness.”
Socialist Standard No. 1391 July 2020
No. 1391 July 2020
Editorial: Working class lives matter
Pathfinders: Virus pandemonium
Cooking the Books I: UBI – Useless Baseless Initiative
Amazon: Fiercely Resisting
Letters
Material World: The Military Police
Covid-19 and the Money Mine
‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’
Race or Class?
Summer School
Empire, Free Trade and Brexit
The Case for Socialism
Cooking the Books II: Negative interest rates
Party News – Discord in the Ranks
Proper Gander: Luxury Legoland
Book Reviews:
50 Years Ago: Debate with “International Socialism Group”
Obituary: Fred Hallows
Meetings
Rear View
Free Lunch by RIGG: Cartoon
Pathfinders: Virus pandemonium
Cooking the Books I: UBI – Useless Baseless Initiative
Amazon: Fiercely Resisting
Letters
Material World: The Military Police
Covid-19 and the Money Mine
‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’
Race or Class?
Summer School
Empire, Free Trade and Brexit
The Case for Socialism
Cooking the Books II: Negative interest rates
Party News – Discord in the Ranks
Proper Gander: Luxury Legoland
Book Reviews:
50 Years Ago: Debate with “International Socialism Group”
Obituary: Fred Hallows
Meetings
Rear View
Free Lunch by RIGG: Cartoon
America First
The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world. Buying up the world’s supply of remdesivir is not just a reaction to the increasing spread and death toll. The US has taken an “America first” attitude throughout the global pandemic.
Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and out-manoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.
“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply of remdesivir, so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University. “This is the first major approved drug, and where is the mechanism for access?” said Dr Hill. “Once again we’re at the back of the queue.” There was no mechanism to ensure a supply outside the US. “Imagine this was a vaccine,” he said. “That would be a firestorm. But perhaps this is a taste of things to come.”
The drug, which was invented for Ebola but failed to work, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it. The cost is around $3,200 per treatment of six doses, according to the US government statement.
In May, French manufacturer Sanofi said the US would get first access to its Covid vaccine if it works. Its CEO, Paul Hudson, was quoted as saying: “The US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk,” and, he added, the US expected that “if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first”. Later it backtracked under pressure from the French government.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau warned there could be unintended negative consequences if the US continued to outbid its allies. “We know it is in both of our interests to work collaboratively and cooperatively to keep our citizens safe,” he said.
The Trump administration has also invoked the Defense Production Act to block some medical goods made in the US from being sent abroad.
Hill said there was a way for the UK to secure supplies of this and other drugs during the pandemic, through what is known as a compulsory licence, which overrides the intellectual property rights of the company. That would allow the UK government to buy from generic companies in Bangladesh or India, where Gilead’s patent is not recognised.
The UK has always upheld patents, backing the argument of pharma companies that they need their 20-year monopoly to recoup the money they put into research and development. But other countries have shown an interest in compulsory licensing.
America First
The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world. Buying up the world’s supply of remdesivir is not just a reaction to the increasing spread and death toll. The US has taken an “America first” attitude throughout the global pandemic.
Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and out-manoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.
“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply of remdesivir, so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University. “This is the first major approved drug, and where is the mechanism for access?” said Dr Hill. “Once again we’re at the back of the queue.” There was no mechanism to ensure a supply outside the US. “Imagine this was a vaccine,” he said. “That would be a firestorm. But perhaps this is a taste of things to come.”
The drug, which was invented for Ebola but failed to work, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it. The cost is around $3,200 per treatment of six doses, according to the US government statement.
In May, French manufacturer Sanofi said the US would get first access to its Covid vaccine if it works. Its CEO, Paul Hudson, was quoted as saying: “The US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk,” and, he added, the US expected that “if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first”. Later it backtracked under pressure from the French government.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau warned there could be unintended negative consequences if the US continued to outbid its allies. “We know it is in both of our interests to work collaboratively and cooperatively to keep our citizens safe,” he said.
The Trump administration has also invoked the Defense Production Act to block some medical goods made in the US from being sent abroad.
Hill said there was a way for the UK to secure supplies of this and other drugs during the pandemic, through what is known as a compulsory licence, which overrides the intellectual property rights of the company. That would allow the UK government to buy from generic companies in Bangladesh or India, where Gilead’s patent is not recognised.
The UK has always upheld patents, backing the argument of pharma companies that they need their 20-year monopoly to recoup the money they put into research and development. But other countries have shown an interest in compulsory licensing.
America – 121 out of 163 countries for peacefulness
The 2020 Global Peace Index is now in its fourteenth year of ranking 163 states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. It defines peace “in terms of the harmony achieved by the absence of violence or the fear of violence… described as Negative Peace.” Its complement is Positive Peace, which are the “attitudes, institutions and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies.”
The GPI measures peace in three domains: Societal Safety and Security, Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict, and Militarization.
Iceland is ranked first in peacefulness, a position it has held since 2008, while Afghanistan is ranked the least peaceful country in the world for the second year in a row. Afghanistan, after trillions in spending and two decades of American military presence — the longest war in U.S. history — has the highest total number of deaths from internal conflict in the world.
The United States is ranked 121st in peacefulness out of 163 countries for the second year in a row. Culturally similar, Canada, is ranked the 6th most peaceful country in the world.
The United States’ military spending accounts for 15 percent of all U.S. federal spending and more than half of the discretionary budget. Only North Korea, Russia, and Israel are higher on the GPI’s “militarization” ranking.
The report uses seven indicators to measure the degree of militarization of a society, including military expenditure as a percentage of GDP and the volume of arms exports and imports per 100,000 people. Though the militarization domain did improve globally in the last year due to reductions in military expenditure, the U.S., Russia, Germany, France, and China still account for 75 percent of total weapons exports, while the U.S. alone accounts for 32 percent.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/29/how-reverse-uss-shockingly-low-global-peace-index-ranking
The time for change has come
People have had enough. People have been standing up for what’s right. Those who would oppress others and divide us against each other for the sake of profit and power are being challenged. We are beset by wars, climate chaos, disease, racism and massive inequality. It is time to press the reset button. We’re at a turning point. We cannot go back to “normal”. Our “normal” was not normal by any standards. It’s time for us to be part of the solution to the multiple crises we are suffering. The pandemic, the constant wars and global warming are forcing great changes in the lives of people all over the Earth. No part of our lives is immune. All these crises are caused by an outdated system that prioritise profits over well-being. We cannot continue to ride on the merry-go-round of consuming throw-away goods, consuming more and more, powered by the gigantic global advertising, media and entertainment industries. However, protests and demonstrations alone will not bring the change society desperately needs. Let’s be clear, to ignite a global vision, to inspire hope, it’s not enough to call out injustice. We require a revolution. Exploitation and oppression are everywhere. Socialism is about building a pathway to a truly egalitarian, democratic and ecologically sustainable planet.
It is not the question of violence that divides the revolutionary from the reformist. Reformism, that is attempts to modify the exploitative relations characteristic of capitalism, still remains reformism no matter how violent the means embraced to that end; and revolutionary activity, that is, activity directed to the termination of capitalist exploitation once and for all, still remains revolutionary even though conducted by the methods allowed by the capitalist state. The immediate task with which socialists are faced is to popularise socialist ideas and understanding with the aim of developing a political party strong enough to effect working class emancipation. As long as conditions permit, we shall pursue this course without deviating, but should subsequent developments unhappily render socialist propaganda illegal, we shall certainly do what we can, but let no one imagine for a moment that theatrical and heroic declarations before the event are in any sense a guarantee of effective action after it. The unpalatable, but nevertheless inescapable fact is that in modern society the suppression of those democratic facilities to which all politically conscious workers quite rightly attribute enormous importance, can only occur because of the approval or indifference of the masses. A working class which allows its political life generally to be determined for it by an absolutist government—no matter what that government may call itself nor what its alleged motives may be—is certainly not the kind of working class to provide a background favourable to socialist propaganda. Socialism will not be the work of a working class prepared to accept tutelage from any quarter; it can only be the work of one that is self-reliant, critical, and politically informed. From this it should be obvious that if freedom of speech, of the press and of association is suppressed, there is precious little that socialists can do about it until developments—notably the corruption which is an inevitable by-product of dictatorship—produce the desire and the determination in the working class to regain the right to openly discuss and consider political affairs. To think otherwise is not only to fool oneself, but to fool others as well.
There can be no socialism until a socialist majority have organised politically for and have achieved the conquest of the machinery of government. Socialism is the only solution, and that independent democratic political action is the method. If the workers do not like the effects of this system upon themselves, it is up to them to change it to one which is based upon the common ownership of the means of production, i.e., socialism.
Socialism involves the abolition of the wages system. This entails that our ability to use our labour power is no longer subjected to the power of the capital social relationship, to be used only when capital sees a profit. Rather our labour power becomes ours, to be used voluntarily as part of our relationship with others, working in association towards our goals—to production for use to meet our needs.
Socialism also involves:
· The abolition of useless production, freeing up of millions of people from producing products and services necessary only for capitalism.
· Social decision-making on what is useful—no tat, built-in obsolescence or environmental damage.
· Breaking up of the division of labour, having multiple roles in society.
· Voluntary work—from each according to their ability; less emphasis on efficiency so people can work as much as their competence allows
· Co-operation between user and provider: not a commodity relationship; providers doing it because they want to—so less likelihood of abuse; no power differential between providers and users but partners; emphasis on building competencies.
The case for socialism as more than an opposition to the economic exploitation of the working class. Throughout their writings, Marx and Engels criticised capitalism because of its effects on the working class as human beings.
Genocide of the Uighur?
China is forcing women to be sterilised or fitted with contraceptive devices in Xinjiang in an apparent attempt to limit the population of Muslim Uighurs, according to a new report by China scholar Adrian Zenz.
“Since a sweeping crackdown starting in late 2016 transformed Xinjiang into a draconian police state, witness accounts of intrusive state interference into reproductive autonomy have become ubiquitous,” the report says.
It has prompted international calls for the United Nations to investigate.
Zenz’s report was based on a combination of official regional data, policy documents and interviews with ethnic minority women in Xinjiang. It alleges that Uighur women and other ethnic minorities are being threatened with internment in the camps for refusing to abort pregnancies that exceed birth quotas. It also says women who had fewer than the two children legally permitted were involuntarily fitted with IUDs, while others were coerced into receiving sterilisation surgeries.
According to Mr Zenz’s analysis of the data, natural population growth in Xinjiang has declined dramatically in recent years, with growth rates falling by 84% in the two largest Uighur prefectures between 2015 and 2018 and declining further in 2019.
“This kind of drop is unprecedented, there’s a ruthlessness to it,” Zenz told the Associated Press. “This is part of a wider control campaign to subjugate the Uighurs.”
Former detainees in internment camps in Xinjiang said they were given injections that stopped their periods, or caused unusual bleeding consistent with the effects of birth control drugs.
According to a report by the Associated Press published on Monday, women in Xinjiang have faced exorbitant fines and threats of internment for breaching childbearing limits.
“Overall, it is likely that Xinjiang authorities are engaging in the mass sterilization of women with three or more children,” the report said.
The Interparliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international cross-party group of politicians including Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and US Republican senator Marco Rubio, called on the UN to “establish an international, impartial, independent investigation into the situation in the Xinjiang region”.
“A body of mounting evidence now exists, alleging mass incarceration, indoctrination, extrajudicial detention, invasive surveillance, forced labor, and the destruction of Uyghur cultural sites, including cemeteries, together with other forms of abuse,” the statement said. “The world cannot remain silent in the face of unfolding atrocities. Our countries are bound by solemn obligations to prevent and punish any effort to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group ‘in whole or in part’.”
Zenz’s report characterises the alleged campaign of coercive birth control in Xinjiang as part of a “demographic campaign of genocide” against the Uighurs.
“These findings provide the strongest evidence yet that Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang meet one of the genocide criteria cited in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” he writes.
Joanne Smith Finley, a China expert at Newcastle University in the UK, said the alleged programme was “genocide, full stop”.
“It’s not immediate, shocking, mass-killing, on-the-spot type genocide, but it’s slow, painful, creeping genocide,” she told the AP. “These are direct means of genetically reducing the Uighur population.”
Right-wing Terror
A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) report released last week, the Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States, CSIS analyzes 25 years of domestic terrorism incidents and finds that the majority of attacks and plots have come from the far right.
The report says “the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of rightwing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years”, with the far right launching two-thirds of attacks and plots in 2019, and 90% of those in 2020.
The report adds: “Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators.”
The CSIS study came during a new wave of terror attacks and plots from white supremacist and anti-government extremists.
The report shows the far left has been an increasingly negligible source of attacks since the mid 2000s.