Blundering Into a War With China

Conn Hallinan

In his January 13 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson made an extraordinary comment concerning China’s activities in the South China Sea. The U.S., he said, must “send a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops,” adding that Beijing’s “access to the those islands is not going to be allowed.”

President Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated the threat on January 24.

Sometimes it is hard to sift the real from the magical in the Trump administration, and bombast appears to be the default strategy of the day. But people should be clear about what would happen if the U.S. actually tries to blockade China from supplying its forces constructing airfields and radar facilities on the Spratley and Paracel islands.

It would be an act of war.

While Beijing’s Foreign Ministry China initially reacted cautiously to the comment, Chinese newspapers have been far less diplomatic. The nationalist Global Times warned of a “large-scale war” if the U.S. followed through on its threat, and the China Daily cautioned that a blockade could lead to a “devastating confrontation between China and the US.”

Independent observers agree. “It is very difficult to imagine the means by which the United States could prevent China from accessing these artificial islands without provoking some kind of confrontation,” says Rory Medcalf, head of Australia’s National Security College. And such a confrontation, says Carlyle Thayer of the University of New South Wales, “could quickly develop into an armed conflict.”

Last summer, China’s commander of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, Wu Shengli, told U.S. Admiral John Richardson that “we will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway.” Nansha is China’s name for the Spratlys. Two weeks later, Chang Wanquan, China’s Defense Minister, said Beijing is preparing for a “people’s war at sea.”

A certain amount of this is posturing by two powerful countries in competition for markets and influence, but Tillerson’s statement did not come out of the blue. In fact, the U.S. is in the middle of a major military buildup, the Obama administration’s “Asia Pivot” in the Pacific. American bases in Okinawa, Japan, and Guam have been beefed up, and for the first time since World War II, U.S. Marines have been deployed in Australia. Last March, the U.S. sent B-2 nuclear-capable strategic stealth bombers to join them.

There is no question that China has been aggressive about claiming sovereignty over small islands and reefs in the South China Sea, even after the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague rejected Beijing’s claims. But if a military confrontation is to be avoided, it is important to try to understand what is behind China’s behavior.

The current crisis has its roots in a tense standoff between Beijing and Taiwan in late 1996. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was angered that Washington had granted a visa to Taiwan’s president, Lee Teng-hui, calling it a violation of the 1979 U.S. “one-China” policy that recognized the PRC and downgraded relations with Taiwan to “unofficial.”

Beijing responded to the visa uproar by firing missiles near a small Taiwan-controlled island and moving some military forces up to the mainland coast facing the island. However, there was never any danger that China would actually attack Taiwan. Even if it wanted to, it didn’t have the means to do so.

Instead of letting things cool off, however, the Clinton administration escalated the conflict and sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region, the USS Nimitz and USS Independence. The Nimitz and its escorts sailed through the Taiwan Straits between the island and the mainland, and there was nothing that China could do about it.

The carriers deeply alarmed Beijing, because the regions just north of Taiwan in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea were the jumping off points for 19^th and 20^th century invasions by western colonialists and the Japanese.

The Straits crisis led to a radical remaking of China’s military, which had long relied on massive land forces. Instead, China adopted a strategy called “Area Denial” that would allow Beijing to control the waters surrounding its coast, in particular the East and South China seas. That not only required retooling of its armed forces—from land armies to naval and air power—it required a ring of bases that would keep potential enemies at arm’s length and also allow Chinese submarines to enter the Pacific and Indian oceans undetected.

Reaching from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula in the north to the Malay Peninsula in the south, this so-called “first island chain” is Beijing’s primary defense line.

China is particularly vulnerable to a naval blockade. Some 80 percent of its energy supplies traverse the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, moving through narrow choke points like the Malacca Straits between Indonesia and Malaysia, the Bab al Mandab Straits controlling the Red Sea, and the Straits of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. All of those passages are controlled by the U.S. or countries like  India and Indonesia with close ties to Washington.

In 2013, China claimed it had historic rights to the region and issued its now famous “nine-dash line” map that embraced the Paracels and Spratly island chains and 85 percent of the South China Sea. It was this nine-dash line that the Hague tribunal rejected, because it found no historical basis for China’s claim, and because there were overlapping assertions by Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines.

There are, of course, economic considerations. The region is rich in oil, gas and fish, but the primary concern for China is security. The Chinese have not interfered with commercial ship traffic, although they have applied on-again, off-again restrictions on fishing and energy explorations. China initially prevented Filipino fishermen from exploiting some reefs, and then allowed it. It has been more aggressive with Vietnam in the Paracels.

Rather than trying to assuage China’s paranoia, the U.S. made things worse by adopting a military strategy to checkmate “Area Denial.” Called “Air/Sea Battle” (renamed “Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons”), Air/Sea Battle envisions attacking China’s navy, air force, radar facilities and command centers with air and naval power. Missiles would be used to take out targets deep into Chinese territory.

The recent seizure of a U.S. underwater drone off the Philippines is part of an on-going chess game in the region. The drone was almost certainly mapping sea floor bottoms and collecting data that would allow the U.S. to track Chinese submarines, including those armed with nuclear missiles. While the heist was a provocative thing to do—it was seized right under the nose of an unarmed U.S. Navy ship—it is a reflection of how nervous the Chinese are about their vulnerability to Air/Sea Battle.

China’s leaders “have good reason to worry about this emerging U.S. naval strategy [use of undersea drones] against China in East Asia,” Li Mingjiang, a China expert at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told the Financial Times. “If this strategy becomes reality, it could be quite detrimental to China’s national security.”

Washington charges that the Chinese are playing the bully with small countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, and there is some truth to that charge. China has been throwing its weight around with several nations in Southeast Asia. But it also true that the Chinese have a lot of evidence that the Americans are gunning for them.

The U.S. has some 400 military bases surrounding China and is deploying anti-ballistic missiles in South Korea and Japan, ostensibly to guard against North Korean nuclear weapons. But the interceptors could also down Chinese missiles, posing a threat to Beijing’s nuclear deterrence.

While Air/Sea Battle does not envision using nuclear weapons, it could still lead to a nuclear war. It would be very difficult to figure out whether missiles were targeting command centers or China’s nukes. Under the stricture “use them, or lose them” the Chinese might fear their missiles were endangered and launch them.

The last thing one wants to do with a nuclear-armed power is make it guess.

The Trump administration has opened a broad front on China, questioning the “one China” policy, accusing Beijing of being in cahoots with Islamic terrorists, and threatening a trade war. The first would upend more than 30 years of diplomacy, the second is bizarre—if anything, China is overly aggressive in suppressing terrorism in its western Xinjiang Province—and the third makes no sense.

China is the U.S.’s major trading partner and holds $1.24 trillion in U.S. Treasury Bonds. While Trump charges that the Chinese have hollowed out the American economy by undermining its industrial base with cheap labor and goods, China did not force Apple or General Motors to pull up stakes and decamp elsewhere. Capital goes where wages are low and unions are weak.

A trade war would hurt China, but it would also hurt the U.S. and the global economy as well.

When President Trump says he wants to make America great again, what he really means is that he wants to go back to that post-World War II period when the U.S. dominated much of the globe with a combination of economic strength and military power. But that era is gone, and dreams of a unipolar world run by Washington are a hallucination.

According to the CIA, “by 2030 Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power based on GDP, population size, military spending and technological investments.” By 2025, two-thirds of the world will live in Asia, 7 percent in Europe and 5 percent in the U.S. Those are the demographics of eclipse.

If Trump starts a trade war, he will find little support among America’s allies. China is the number one trading partner for Japan, Australia, South Korea, Vietnam and India, and the third largest for Indonesia and the Philippines. Over the past year, a number of countries like Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines have also distanced themselves from Washington and moved closer to China. When President Obama tried to get U.S. allies not to sign on to China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, they ignored him.

But the decline of U.S. influence has a dangerous side. Washington may not be able to dictate the world’s economy, but it has immense military power.  Chinese military expert Yang Chengjun says “China does not stir up troubles, but we are not afraid of them when they come.”  They should be. For all its modernization, China is no match for the U.S. However, defeating China is far beyond Washington’s capacity. The only wars the U.S. has “won” since 1945 are Grenada and Panama.

Nonetheless, such a clash would be catastrophic. It would torpedo global trade, inflict trillions of dollars damage on each side, and the odds are distressingly high that the war could go nuclear.

U.S. allies in the region should demand that the Trump administration back off any consideration of a blockade. Australia has already told Washington it will not take part in any such action. The U.S. should also do more than rename Air/Sea Battle, it should junk the entire strategy. The East and South China seas are not national security issues for the U.S., but they are for China.

And China should realize that, while it has the right to security, trotting out ancient dynastic maps to lay claim to vast areas bordering scores of countries does nothing but alienate its neighbors and give the U.S. an excuse to interfere in affairs thousands of miles from its own territory.

Unspoken Words: Nuclear War Provocations and Plans

Judith Deutsch

During the election campaign there was a brief period of anxiety about Clinton or Trump taking possession of the nuclear code, with the power to eradicate our species at the push of a few buttons.  But where has discussion, let alone mention, of nuclear weapons gone?   An exception is the brief article by Robert Dodge in Counterpunch  about the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advancing the Doomsday Clock to 2 ½ minutes before the midnight of human extinction caused by nuclear war or climate change:  “Nuclear weapons are not even on the radar of our congress. Their phones are not ringing off the hook about nuclear weapons.”

In a January 30^th interview with Sonali Kolhatkar, George Lakoff discussed Trump’s trial balloon about nuclear weapons in which Trump said that if we have them, we should use them.  Lakoff said that there was a very brief reaction and then it’s gone, signaling that the public doesn’t care.  Doesn’t care or doesn’t know? Harvard professor Elaine Scarry has said that some of her students had never heard of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It is a dangerous time to not know about nuclear weapons.  Trump inherited from Obama the ongoing US/NATO/Israeli escalation and military encirclement against  Iran, China, and Russia, and  the $1tn program to modernize nuclear weapons.   On January 28^th the Ron Paul Institute reported that Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) introduced a bill to Congress:    “… it specifically authorizes the president to launch a pre-emptive war on Iran at any time of his choosing and without any further Congressional oversight or input, as the President determines necessary and appropriate in order to achieve the goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” (Emphasis added).

Among the challengers to Iran’s purported nuclear threat are  Richard Falk (UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, expert on nuclear weapons and international law):  “What has Iran done to justify this frantic war-mongering … the outright threats emanating from Israel and the U.S. that leaves ‘all options’ on the table”?   Seymour Hersh investigated Israel’s nuclear weapons program in his book The Samson Option.  About Iran, Hersh wrote of “the repeated inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran….. with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.”  And perhaps most damning, the U.K. Guardian: “Leaked spy cables show Binyamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document.”  Robert Fisk in The Independent 2012: “The Israeli President warns us now that Iran is on the cusp of producing a nuclear weapon. Heaven preserve us. Yet we reporters do not mention that Shimon Peres, as Israeli Prime Minister, said exactly the same thing in 1996. That was 16 years ago. And we do not recall that the current Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, said in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999. That would be 13 years ago.  Same old story. We’ve been here before – and it suits Israel that we never forget ‘Nuclear Iran.’”

Noam Chomsky reported that a  nuclear Iran suited the U.S. pre-1979, before the Islamic revolution overthrew the brutal shah regime.  “A secret agreement made between MIT and the Shah of Iran, … pretty much amounted to turning over the Nuclear Engineering Department to the Shah.”  Cheney, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, and Wolfowitz “wanted Iran to develop nuclear facilities and they were allies at the time.” 

Demonizing Iran at this time deflects attention from real nuclear dangers.  According to the 2016 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the nine nuclear states together possess a total of approximately 15,395 nuclear weapons, with the United States and Russia accounting for more than 93%.   The public likely does not know that shortly after the UN pledged to end the scourge of war, shortly after two atomic bombs killed minimally 140,000 Japanese people, that the U.S. embarked on developing far more lethal hydrogen bombs.   The explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb was 15-16 kilotons, whereas today’s bombs are in the range of 100 Kt to 550Kt of TNT (6 to 34 times the Hiroshima force). “Even a small-scale nuclear war involving one hundred Hiroshima-type (15 Kt) nuclear bombs between two countries such as India and Pakistan, would have a devastating effect on Earth’s climate” and “it is unlikely there would be any survivors.”  “At most, this would involve only 0.3% of the world’s nuclear explosive power”

Nuclear weapons are deployed by intercontinental ballistic missiles, by submarine launched ballistic missiles, and by strategic bombers.   Submarines carrying up to 24 missiles, with each carrying  four to five warheads, possibly as many as 144 warheads per submarine, constantly patrol the oceans.   In a striking example of apparent disregard for the people of this planet,  a CNN newscast from August 2016 shows a smiling Michelle Obama “christening” a General Dynamic Virginia-class submarine manufactured in Connecticut, named after her, and designed to carry nuclear weapons.     According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, even though a Russian first-strike is not a credible risk, the United States still keeps its 450 silo-based nuclear weapons, and hundreds of submarine-based weapons, on hair-trigger alert and ready to launch within ten minutes toward their targets.

The five year UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review met in April, 2015, following four years of preparatory meetings.  Given the volatile tension between the U.S. and Russia and China, there was an urgency to take nuclear weapons off high alert status.  Instead, the focus of the month-long meeting was diverted to Iran’s nuclear weapons and to political opposition by the U.S., U.K., and Canada to establishing a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East in order to shield Israel’s nuclear program from international laws and oversight.  In violation of the NPT, Germany has provided Israel  with a fleet of advanced submarines equipped to fire long-range nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.  Astonishingly, two of these submarines, which carry weapons of mass destruction, were given to Israel as Holocaust reparation!  According to Netanyahu, the submarines carry nuclear weapons pointed at Iran.  “The Obama administration’s pretense that it knows nothing about any nuclear weapons in Israel makes intelligent discussion about the dangers of nuclear weapons in the Middle East all but impossible.” India provides Israel with a launching site in the Indian Ocean.

During the Cold War, nuclear weapons strategy was based on deterrence, or mutually assured destruction (MAD).  Deterrence necessitated the capacity to retaliate with nuclear weapons, so the strategy in itself required weapons proliferation.  Shortly after 9/11,  G.W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM).   Missile defence systems are designed to destroy incoming nuclear missiles shortly after they are launched.   There is a belief within the military that the U.S. could destroy its enemy’s full nuclear arsenal and prevent retaliation.  Nuclear strategy shifted from deterrence to pre-emptive first strike, with the belief that a nuclear war is winnable and acceptable.

Frustrated by the decades-long paralysis in regulating and eliminating these weapons, and fearful that there is even more likelihood of nuclear war than during the Cold War, the UN-formed Open Ended Working Group (OPEG), made up of all nations, is now focusing entirely and explicitly on eliminating nuclear weapons.  The nuclear-armed nations, plus many liberal democracies like Canada, Italy, Germany, Spain and other NATO countries, have voted against the majority.  Iran voted for.

The late Jonathan Schell dedicated his life to the abolition of nuclear weapons.  He wrote that nuclear exterminism did not come from 20^thcentury totalitarian regimes, but that “the most radical evil imaginable – the extinction of the human species— [was] first placed in the hands of a liberal republic”.  A graver suspicion was that the United States and its allies did not build these weapons to face extraordinary danger, but because of “an intrinsic element of the dominant liberal civilization itself – an evil that first grew and still grows from within that civilization rather than being imposed from without.”  Entire societies, the human species itself, are merely a pawn.   Schell writes that nuclear strategy is the “very epicenter of banality” and is manufactured in think tanks and academic institutions from the pseudoscience of game theory.

The anti-nuclear and antiwar movements have been relatively silent about Israel and about Obama’s nuclear program.    One current political opening may be women’s timely activism on the ground, with the precedent of women having led the successful opposition to atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in 1961.  Women, in their historical role of caring for the young and old, for growing food and carrying water, are the unseen victims of war and should have the power to veto.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation seeks power in Australian states

Mike Head 

Buoyed by US President Donald Trump’s election, Pauline Hanson’s anti-immigrant One Nation party has declared its intention to take government, or at least win the parliamentary “balance of power,” in a number of Australian states, notably Western Australia (WA) and Hanson’s home state of Queensland. The first test of Hanson’s ambition will come in the WA state election on March 11, followed by an election due in Queensland by early next year.

Last November, amid a glare of media coverage, Hanson greeted Trump’s victory by popping bottles of champagne on the Parliament House lawn in Canberra with other One Nation senators. “Why I’m celebrating is that I can see that people ... around the world are saying, we’ve had enough of the establishment,” she said. “I can see in Donald Trump a lot of me and what I stand for in Australia.”

Hanson solicited, via contacts in Trump’s team, an invitation for one of her Senate colleagues to attend Trump’s inauguration. She tweeted: “Would you believe it? ... what an honour!” The invitation was delivered via the office of US Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, who contacted Darren Nelson, an economist who once worked for Trump and now advises One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts.

An avid climate science denier, Roberts was himself in Washington during December, attending a conference of some of the world’s most notorious anti-climate science figures. He posed for photographs with Myron Ebell, of the oil industry-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, who was picked by Trump to lead his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “transition team.” Trump’s administration is stripping powers from the EPA, thus boosting the profits of the energy conglomerates.

Increasingly, Hanson is hailing Trump’s policies as the basis for One Nation extending its power base from having three or four senators in federal parliament to holding office, initially at state level, possibly in coalitions with Liberal-National or Labor-led governments. This week, she praised Trump’s refugee and immigration bans, accusing Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of being “too weak” to make such “tough decisions.”

Emulating Trump, Hanson whipped up fears of Islamic terrorism, calling for a total ban on Islamic immigration. “The people of America have elected Donald Trump because they wanted to regain control of their borders and protect themselves against the influence and threat of radical Islamic terrorism,” she declared.

Hanson is cynically exploiting the widespread political disaffection with the establishment parties—Labor, Liberal-National and the Greens—which are responsible for making deep inroads into the living standards of working people. She is seeking to divert this hostility in reactionary nationalist and anti-immigrant directions, blaming refugees, “Asians,” “Muslims,” “foreign workers” and “free trade” for the social devastation caused by the profit system.

In states like Queensland and WA, the discontent has been intensified by the collapse of the mining boom that once generated jobs in mining projects and resources-related industries. There are now mining “ghost towns” and regions mired in recession. This has aggravated the social crisis caused by years of manufacturing closures and public sector cuts.

WA was the site of the country’s biggest iron ore mines, once responsible for a substantial portion of the state’s tax revenues. Large liquefied natural gas (LNG) construction projects have been completed, ending the employment of thousands of construction workers, or put on hold. By the middle of 2016, the value of projects underway was only $1.6 billion, well below the $50 billion three years earlier.

Even by understated official figures, WA’s unemployment rate is near 7 percent, one of the worst in the country. The rate is 24 percent around the northern Perth suburbs of Balga, Mirrabooka and Girrawheen, and 21 percent in central Mandurah, about 70 kilometres south of Perth. Other areas in or near Perth have rates above 10 percent, including Gosnells, Maddington, Hamilton Hill, Rockingham and Midland.

These are among the areas targeted by One Nation, which claims to have support as high as 30 percent in some pockets of the state. Hanson claims that One Nation will run 60 candidates in the state election. An opinion poll published in the West Australian last month put One Nation’s overall vote at 11 percent. That would be enough to win seats in the state parliament, giving it the capacity to hold the so-called balance of power—that is, to form a majority by blocking either with Labor or the Liberal and National parties.

Hanson’s campaign in WA is an eclectic grab bag. She has professed to oppose the destruction of jobs, and the planned privatisation of the state’s electricity grid, while calling for unspecified further cuts to government spending. At the same time, she has sought to foment divisive, anti-Muslim sentiment by calling for a ban on women wearing a burqa.

For electoral purposes, Hanson has taken up various causes: more treatment for PTSD-suffering military veterans, legalisation of medicinal cannabis, more Australian-made products in supermarkets, a crackdown on politicians’ entitlements, and protection of the taxi industry against ride-sharing service Uber.

While claiming to champion the downtrodden, her program serves the interests of the corporate elite, particularly national-based business, and sets sections of the working class against each other along ethnic and communal lines. As well as “zero-net immigration,” One Nation demands the imposition of tariffs on imports, in order to “protect our manufacturing from further decline, closure or going offshore.” Its climate change denying dovetails with the interests of the energy companies.

Hanson first emerged in the late 1990s, denouncing Asians, Aborigines and welfare recipients, blaming them for the worsening conditions facing working people after 13 years of Labor government under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. When One Nation won nearly a quarter of the vote in a 1998 Queensland state election—throwing official politics into turmoil—the media and political establishment launched a campaign to discredit and break apart the party, and ultimately railroad Hanson to prison in 2003 on trumped-up electoral registration charges.

Today, while still depicting herself as an “anti-elite” political outsider—adopting Trump’s slogan of “drain the swamp”—Hanson is making a clear pitch to join the political establishment.

Speaking last month in Perth, Hanson said: “The rise of One Nation in 1996 was unprecedented to the extent the major political parties had to get rid of me… Back 20 years ago it was ‘we were too much of a right-wing party’ and I think that tag has been lost from One Nation.

“We have gained more credibility because we have put up more policies. Even the leaders like [WA Premier] Colin Barnett and [Prime Minister] Malcolm Turnbull say we have more centre policies. The thing is, my policies have not changed over the years they have just been reported differently.”

These comments underline the degree to which the entire political establishment has shifted sharply to the right. In the 1990s, the Howard Coalition government adopted key planks of Hanson’s program, particularly her anti-refugee and anti-welfare policies, before it orchestrated the frame-up against her. Now, sections of the political, media and corporate elite are actively promoting Hanson to divert even greater political disaffection. In WA, the Liberals and Labor, who both once ruled out giving her second preference votes, are negotiating preference-swapping deals with One Nation in bids to scrape back into office.

Italian court ruling sparks demands for early elections

Marianne Arens 

The Constitutional Court in Rome last month overturned parts of Italy’s 2015 electoral law, known as the “Italicum”. However, even without these sections, in particular a provision for a second round if no party reaches 40 percent in the vote for parliament, the court’s January 25 ruling held that the law as a whole is still valid.

This has unleashed a fierce discussion about early elections. Beppe Grillo of the Five Star Movement, the Lega Nord and also Matteo Renzi, who resigned as premier after the failed December 4 referendum on constitutional reform, are demanding immediate elections.

“Stop the delay”, Matteo Renzi said at Democratic Party (PD) headquarters. “The parties should immediately say whether they want to contest the ruling.” The PD advocates the “Mattarellum” (a hybrid form of proportional representation and majority voting, which was in force from 1993 to 2005). Otherwise, the election should be held according to the existing laws. Renzi was “satisfied that there is finally no longer an alibi”.

But President Sergio Mattarella is hesitating. The legislative period officially runs until 2018, and the current government under Paolo Gentiloni (PD), which Mattarella approved provisionally in December, enjoys a majority in both chambers. Gentiloni, Renzi’s former foreign minister, continues to rely on a coalition of the Democratic Party and the right-wing New Centre-Right (NCD). He is essentially continuing Renzi’s pro-EU and bank-friendly policies.

Mattarella has no interest in holding quick elections, either under the Mattarellum (which he himself had designed 25 years ago), or even under the Italicum. In an amended Italicum, the election winner would only receive a majority if they reached 40 percent of the vote—a highly unusual outcome for Italy. What is far more likely is that the clear majority desired by big business, the banks and the EU would not emerge from an election.

Mattarella insists that elections can only take place when there is a uniform electoral law applying to both chambers of parliament. This is still not the case, even after the recent Constitutional Court ruling. The Italicum applies only to the House of Representatives (lower house) and not to the Senate (upper chamber), which under Renzi’s constitutional reform would have been abolished as an elected body. The December 4 referendum failed, and so the Senate remains. Since then, different electoral systems apply to the two chambers.

The government must now draw up a new electoral law, which must be agreed by both chambers, something that could take months. The text of the arguments underlying the ruling will only be issued in the second half of February.

Banking crisis and social polarization

Mattarella has many reasons to delay new elections. The government is under pressure from the EU and urgently needs time to get the acute banking crisis in Italy under control.

The Italian banks are burdened with a gigantic mountain of bad loans, and risk drawing the EU and the euro into the crisis. At the end of December, a six-month emergency programme was approved by the EU in order to save Italy’s third largest bank, the ailing Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, from collapse, using state funds.

While twenty billion euros of taxpayers’ money are flowing into the banks, the social situation of the working population continues to deteriorate. A wave of corporate bankruptcies, 40 percent youth unemployment and the continuation of social devastation and austerity measures are increasingly being aimed against the working class by the government.

Working people are angry and bitter about the current situation. In early December, an Ipsos survey found that more than 80 percent of the population were dissatisfied with the economic situation. The “No” vote in the December 4 referendum was a clear rejection of the government’s policy and the austerity diktats of the European Union.

In recent weeks, new earthquakes and extreme winter conditions have exacerbated the social misery. On January 18, a devastating avalanche buried Berghotel Rigopiano in Gran Sasso. There were 40 people in the building, which was buried under the avalanche and moved several metres. Two escaped by accident and nine were rescued, but 29 people died.

The tragedy has unleashed enormous public anger because help was seriously delayed and was only really in place after days. The deaths could have been avoided, and hotel guests and staff could have been rescued. Alarmed by the earthquake warnings, they had already packed their suitcases half a day before the disaster and were ready to leave. But they were not evacuated because the requested snowplough was slow in coming. Even when the avalanche came down the mountain, the emergency calls were first ignored. The prefecture responded by shrugging its shoulders and squandered vital hours.

Recently, it was revealed that the luxury hotel had been built illegally on the scree of a previous avalanche. Just months ago, a case against the former hotel operator for “illegal construction activities and corruption” was halted. Had the authorities responded, no one would have been permitted to stay there, and no one would have fallen victim to the avalanche.

For weeks, the Abruzzo region was being covered in deep snow. New tremors are still occurring. In August and October, two earthquakes devastated the area. Since then, thousands have had to live in inadequate temporary accommodation. A power outage affecting 300,000 people left them sitting in the dark in their container housing for days without heating. At least two pensioners froze to death.

All these events are worsening the social misery. For years, large sections of the working class and the youth have increasingly turned away from the establishment parties. However, what is missing is a workers’ party that fights for an international revolutionary programme. As a result, only the parties advocating an aggressive nationalism à la Trump have profited.

Beppe Grillo takes a stand for Donald Trump

In first place, this applies to Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement (M5S). According to a January 13 Ipsos survey, the Five Star Movement, with 30.9 percent, is in front of the Democratic Party, with 30.1 percent, (while both the Lega Nord and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia only recorded about 12 percent).

Grillo vigorously attacked the other parties saying they were deliberately delaying the elections until September because their newer MPs are only able to claim their pensions after September. He said that the current government majority “created the worst institutional chaos ever”, and that immediate elections should be held under the existing law, and that he would personally ensure that the Five Star Movement passed the 40-percent hurdle.

Since Donald Trump took office, Grillo feels his fortunes are on the rise. Shortly after Trump’s election victory, he declared on his blog that Trump had proclaimed “a general fuck-off (un Vaffanculo generale)”. In an interview published on 22 January in the French Journal du Dimanche, Grillo praised the new US president and supported his policies on several points, while he called the “European balance sheet” a “complete failure”.

“I am quite optimistic,” Grillo said when asked about Trump. He was saying “sensible things, for example, about the need to bring back economic activity inside the United States again ... The big companies would no longer go to Mexico, but remain in the United States, they would receive tax relief. He is getting the small and medium enterprises moving and withdrawing the US Army, which was stationed in all four corners of the world. I agree with all this.”

Under Obama, foreign policy was “a disaster,” Grillo said. “If Trump wants to move closer to Putin and put things back in good order, he deserves our support. Two giants talking together, this is the dream of the whole world!”

Clearly, Grillo is willing to serve Trump as an ally against the EU. This reinforces the crisis of the Italian government and the EU, and exacerbates the threat of war.

British government secures vote to proceed with Brexit

Chris Marsden

The Conservative government of Theresa May has cleared all House of Commons hurdles to triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, beginning the British departure from the European Union (EU). Debate on the White Paper on Brexit, to be published today, will also be confined to three days, enabling May to meet her plan to initiate the two-year process in March.

After a two-day debate, MPs first voted on a “reasoned amendment” tabled by the Scottish National Party (SNP) that would have denied the bill a second reading and prevented Brexit. The amendment, which stated that the government “has left unanswered” questions over “the full implications of withdrawal from the single market,” was backed by 33 Labour MPs, 50 SNP, seven of nine Liberal Democrats and Kenneth Clarke of the Conservatives.

In the main vote, to give the Article 50 bill a second reading, May secured 498 votes to 114—a majority of 384. A procedural motion on the three-day timetable saw the opposition vote fall by two to 112.

After the three days of debate in the Commons, the issue will then be debated by the House of Lords.

The government was always going to succeed, given that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had pledged to “respect” last year’s referendum vote, which the pro-Brexit faction of the ruling class won by 52 to 48 percent in a result that sent shock waves through the dominant sections of the bourgeoisie who supported Remain.

Given the concern over the impact of exclusion from the European Single Market on UK business, and the public outcry over May’s embrace of President Donald Trump, the hopes of pro-Remain forces were for a sizeable rebellion that would give a firm basis for trench warfare over the coming months and a possible repudiation of the deal eventually struck by May with the EU.

With almost two million people signing a petition opposing a planned state visit for Trump, the pro-Remain forces in the Labour Party, Liberal Democrats and Greens sought to exploit the demonstrations Monday against Trump to stiffen the resolve of Labour MPs to defy Corbyn’s three-line whip. There was a measure of success, as Shadow Cabinet members Rachael Maskell and Dawn Butler joined Jo Stevens, who quit earlier, in resigning from the front bench shortly before the vote.

The overall number of Labour rebels rose to 47—over a fifth of the parliamentary party—helping to boost the overall opposition vote from a predicted 90.

Corbyn made placatory remarks regarding the latest rebellion—involving many of the forces involved in last September’s attempted coup to remove him—while his shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, pledged to fight for amendments to the Brexit bill to guarantee “the fullest possible access to the single market, unimpeded by tariffs and red tape.”

However, in reality a lack of support from pro-Remain Conservatives means that none are likely to pass.

Already by Tuesday, it was apparent that no rebellion was going to materialise within the Tory Party. The veteran MP Clarke was alone in denouncing Brexit, so that he was hailed as a hero by pro-Remain newspapers. He declared that even Enoch Powell, who in 1968 predicted “Rivers of Blood” would be produced by immigration, “would probably find it amazing to believe that his party had become Eurosceptic and rather mildly anti-immigrant...”

He spoke sarcastically of pro-Brexit forces believing in a “wonderland where suddenly countries around the world are queuing up to give us trading advantages and access to their markets that previously we had never been able to achieve as part of the European Union. Nice men like President Trump and President Erdogan are just impatient to abandon their normal protectionism and give us access.”

Articulating the essential concerns of much of big business, he concluded, “Our membership of the European Union restored to us our national self-confidence, gave us politically a role in the world as a leading member of the union which made us more valuable to our allies like the US and made our rivals like the Russians take us more seriously because of our role of leadership in the EU and it helped to reinforce our own values as well. And our economy benefited enormously and continued to benefit even more as the market developed.”

Given the gravity of the crisis facing British capitalism post-Brexit, there was a sigh of relief and joy within the mostly pro-Brexit media—and a cry of near despair in the editorial offices of the Guardian at the convincing majority won by the government.

The Guardian has played the leading propaganda role in support of both remaining in the EU and seeking Corbyn’s removal on the basis of accusing him of being responsible for losing the referendum. In the days leading up to the vote, it ran articles calling for a Tory rebellion, as well as one by Polly Toynbee insisting, “Labour MPs owe a duty to the country—not Corbyn’s absurd three-line whip.”

In another article she described Clarke as “magnificent,” but only “the lone refuser.” She wailed, “How did it come to this act of collective cowardice?”

Toynbee described the US as “the global authoriser of racism, torture and climate-change denial,” insisting that, “Our safest haven is the European Union. This is no time to make ourselves the vulnerable vassals of Trump’s every whim.”

Yet Brexit proceeds apace, despite such pleadings—and the more consequential and serious concerns within Britain’s boardrooms as to its impact, both economic and political. This is not because of a newly discovered commitment to the “popular will” among the corrupt political classes, but above all because the referendum vote has served to exacerbate divisions and tensions that were already apparent between British imperialism and its continental rivals, above all Germany and France.

It cannot be excluded that the UK strikes some new deal with the EU, as is hoped for by the Lib Dems, SNP and Labour’s Blairite wing. But even May, who supported Remain, unlike the pro-Brexit forces to which she is now beholden, calculates that this would involve a humiliating and costly retreat. Hence she must now cling ever more firmly to the possibility of an alliance with Trump in the hope that this will force concessions from the EU, while compensating for the loss of European trade.

That is why May’s response to the attacks on her relations with Trump earlier during Prime Minister’s Questions was so hard-line--despite the damage it is doing to her government. When Corbyn asked her “What happened?” to her promise to speak frankly to Trump and whether she knew of his plan to bar migrants from seven Muslim countries, May retorted, “He can lead a protest, I’m leading a country ... The Right Honourable Gentleman’s foreign policy is to object to and insult the democratically elected head of state of our most important ally.”

It is impossible to predict how deep the schism within Britain’s ruling class will become in the next period—If this will end in a political realignment between pro-and-anti EU tendencies that many, including the leading lights among the 47 Labour rebels, are working for—let alone which wing will finally win out.

What is certain is that the UK is entering a period of intense political crisis. Bitter conflicts lie ahead over whether Trump will give Britain anything worth having, given his protectionist “America First” agenda, or whether the UK must seek a place in a European block against the US.

All sides will continue to poison the political environment with their opposing programmes for trade war, protectionism and appeals to safeguard the “national interest.” And the working class will be made to pay, amid calls for yet greater sacrifice of wages, working conditions and essential services in order to ensure that Britain remains competitive in an ever-more cut-throat world that only pits them against their brothers and sisters in the US and Europe alike.

Anti-Trump protests continue to sweep US cities and campuses

Tom Eley

On Tuesday and Wednesday, protests continued across the US against the policies of the twelve-day-old administration of Donald Trump.

The demonstrations, which have taken place in scores of cities and towns, as well as airports and college campuses, have in recent days become increasingly focused on the new administration’s attack on democratic rights, including its executive edicts attacking immigrants and refugees and Trump’s nomination of the far-right figure Neil Gorsuch to replace the Supreme Court seat vacated by the death, one year ago, of Antonin Scalia.

Large protests against Gorsuch’s nomination assembled in New York and Washington, D.C. on Tuesday evening, almost simultaneous to Trump’s announcement. The demonstration in Washington surrounded the Supreme Court building. In New York, protesters marched on Trump Tower, where 11 were arrested, including Gwen Carr, mother of the late Eric Garner, who was murdered by New York City police in 2014 for selling individual cigarettes on the street.

Also in New York, more than 3,000 demonstrators descended on the luxury apartment complex which is home to Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to protest his complicity in ushering through Trump’s ultra-right cabinet picks.

The protesters shouted slogans against the senator, who has himself cast votes for several of Trump’s nominees, and held signs reading “Get a spine, Chuck.” Interviewed by the media, one protester said of Schumer that he is “bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs.”

The threat of large scale protests forced the cancellation of a scheduled Trump visit to Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Thursday. Motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson scotched the presidential tour through of one of its suburban Milwaukee plants, where Trump was slated to sign a new series of executive memoranda related to his trade war policies. In 2011, Wisconsin was the scene of a wave of protests involving hundreds of thousands in opposition to attacks on workers’ rights launched by Republican Governor Scott Walker.

In neighboring Minnesota, a crowd estimated at between 5,000 and 15,000 marched through downtown Minneapolis on Tuesday to oppose Trump’s executive orders banning refugees and attacking immigrants.

The event was originally sponsored by a local anti-war group, but news of the demonstration spread on Facebook and social media. The march eventually forced the closure of several city blocks near the Minneapolis Federal Building. The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul are home to about one-third of the roughly 80,000 immigrants from Somalia in the US, one of the seven countries targeted by Trump in his immigration ban.

Hundreds of Worcester, Massachusetts, residents crowded around City Hall on Tuesday evening to protest against a city councilman’s proposal that Worcester abide by Trump’s federal orders, which would effectively end its status as a “sanctuary city.” Also on Tuesday evening, over 1,000 demonstrated outside of the Norwich, Connecticut, City Hall.

On Wednesday, a crowd estimated at over 1,000 demonstrated outside City Hall in Portland, Maine. Protests estimated in the hundreds also took place at Tennessee rallies in Nashville and Murfreesboro, with the common slogan “no ban, no wall, no mass deportations.” Another demonstration took place in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Also on Wednesday, hundreds demonstrated in Clayton, Missouri, outside the offices of Republican Senator Roy Blunt, against Trump’s immigration ban and his nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. In Hazleton, Pennsylvania, about 30 demonstrated at the offices of the anti-immigrant chauvinist, Representative Lou Barletta, a Trump loyalist. More than 100 demonstrated in Clove City, California, near the office of Rep. Devin Nunes. In Chicago, over 200 protested outside of the offices of the Department of Homeland Security.

Workers at telecommunications giant Comcast have organized a walkout against the Trump immigration ban, to take place today in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New York City, and Sunnyvale, California. In response to an employee petition, which had 1,200 signatories by Wednesday afternoon, Comcast announced that employees who leave work will not be docked pay.

In New York City, over 1,000 Yemeni-American “bodega” convenience store owners will close shop on Thursday from noon until 8 p.m. in protest against Trump’s immigrant ban, which singles out Yemen and six other predominantly Muslim countries, all of which have been targeted by US wars or sanctions.

Protests continue to sweep college campuses and high schools

On Tuesday several thousand students protested at Rutgers University, and later marched through downtown New Brunswick, New Jersey. At Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California a crowd estimated at 150 showed up to protest a campus talk by Breitbart News editor and anti-Muslim zealot Milo Yiannopoulos, who was protected by police SWAT teams. Protests against Yiannopoulos, an associate of Trump chief advisor Stephen Bannon, were also expected at Berkeley on Wednesday evening.

At Old Dominion University in Virginia a crowd reported in the hundreds protested Trump’s anti-immigrant orders on Tuesday. “It’s heartbreaking for me,” Iraqi graduate student Bnar Mustafa, who is blocked by Trump’s order from seeing her family, told a local reporter. “I’m 39 weeks pregnant and I really want to visit my family or they can come visit me, but now I’m stuck.”

Protests ranging in size from dozens to thousands also took place on Wednesday at Chapman University in Los Angeles; Florida International University in Miami; the main campuses of the University of Connecticut and the University of Missouri; Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge; American University in Washington, D.C.; Stony Brook University in New York; and RPI University in Troy, New York; on Tuesday at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant; Michigan State University in Lansing; the University of California, Riverside; the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa; Duke University in North Carolina; Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York; Ashland University in Ohio; and Lehigh University and Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.

Also on Wednesday, a student walkout took place at Akins High School in Austin, Texas. High school walkouts have been reported since Trump’s inauguration, including in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Berkeley in California; several districts in Washington state; Evanston, Illinois; and Providence, Rhode Island, among many others.

Across the US and internationally, the demonstrations since Trump’s inauguration have been characterized by a high degree of spontaneity, illustrated by the ubiquity of homemade signs. They have been routinely larger than organizers’ expectations, and have often focused on issues related to attacks on democratic rights and public education, rather than the narrow single-issue questions associated with identity politics—the stock-in-trade of the upper-middle class protest groups, layers that are openly seeking to divert the opposition to Trump back into the Democratic Party, whose policies differ in no fundamental respect from those of the current administration.

After first distancing themselves from the protests, Democratic Party politicians are now attempting to prevent it from emerging as a challenge to the two major capitalist parties.

“It’s spontaneous, it’s unorganized, and the challenge is going to be to organize it,” Michigan Democratic Representative Sandy Levin, 85, told The Hill. “I’ve been around for a long time. I haven’t seen anything like this since the Vietnam War.”

“Unity is the key. In order to have our voice heard we have to be unified, and that hasn’t always been the case,” said Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “This is an important test of discipline.”

“Unity” with the Democrats means defeat. During his eight years in the presidency, Barack Obama expanded war throughout the Middle East and Central Asia and pushed forward class war policies that saw the vast enrichment of the top 10 percent and the impoverishment of most American workers.

As for democratic rights, it was Obama that claimed and used the right to assassinate anyone, including citizens, and who deported more immigrants and prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents. Those Obama policies not only paved the way for Trump’s victory, they now fall into the lap of the most right-wing administration in US history.

The only way forward for the demonstrators is to break decisively with the Democratic Party and chart an independent course based on the international unity of the working class in opposition to attacks on democratic rights, living standards and the threat of world war.

Draft White House orders would accelerate deportation of low-income immigrants

Eric London

According to a Washington Post report Tuesday, the White House is preparing two executive orders that dramatically expand the Trump administration’s attack on immigrant workers, targeting especially those immigrants, with or without papers, who make use of public services such as food stamps, Medicaid or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The newspaper published copies of the two draft executive orders, as well as accompanying memoranda urging Trump to sign the orders.

One draft order pledges to “[i]dentify and remove, as expeditiously as possible, any alien who has become a public charge and is subject to removal.” The order would expand on Trump’s threat to prioritize for deportation those undocumented workers who have criminal convictions or have merely been accused of a crime. In effect, receiving federal benefits to which they were legally entitled would be treated as a semi-criminal act, moving recipients up the priority list for deportation.

The memorandum accompanying this draft order, written by White House staffer Andrew Bremberg, argues, “The immigration laws must ensure the United States does not welcome individuals who are likely to become or have become a burden on taxpayers.”

The language of the order suggests that the Trump administration intends to expand the attack on immigrants receiving federal benefits to include those holding legal visas and work permits, or even green cards. It mandates the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to draft new rules—subject to public comment and review before enactment—under which “any alien” would be “subject to removal” if they have “become a public charge.”

The order goes on to claim that “households headed by aliens are much more likely than those headed by citizens to use Federal means-tested public benefits,” and it requires various federal departments to collect and publish statistics to prove this charge.

The first draft order would also eliminate the Child Tax Credit for those immigrants without Social Security numbers who still pay taxes, and would also allow the government to “seek reimbursement from all sponsors of immigrants for the costs of Federal means-tested public benefits provided to sponsored immigrants.” In other words, the husbands, wives, children, parents, and employers of immigrants who sponsor an immigrant’s petition would be forced to pay for any benefits their relative or employee uses.

The proposed draft sheds light on what the content of the term “extreme vetting” means for those attempting to enter the US. The order also instructs the agencies to “deny admission to any alien who is likely to become a public charge.” Under current immigration law, immigrants must already prove that they have relatives who can house them and ensure they will not become dependent on government programs. While the Obama administration treated this as one factor in whether an immigrant was admissible, the proposed new order would require denial of admission.

A second draft order is aimed at closing employment opportunities for legal immigrants. It calls for a review of all work-related visas and a tightening of employment options for those without work authorization: those who enter the United States on student or tourist visas.

It is already difficult for undocumented workers to acquire work permits. Usually this can be done once an immigrant has filed a petition to adjust their immigration status, to apply for asylum, or to gain immigrant benefits through a spouse or employer, but otherwise such migrants must work in the shadows.

This draft order contains language aimed at presenting the persecution of immigrants as an effort to help American-born workers, and particularly minorities: “The unlawful employment of aliens has had a devastating impact on the wages and jobs of American workers, especially low-skilled, teenage, and African-American and Hispanic workers.” This is a particularly cynical lie, given Trump’s adamant opposition to increasing the minimum wage and fund programs to assist these more oppressed layers of the working class.

The second order instructs the government to begin “publishing data in a format easy for the public to understand regarding immigration patterns to the United States and a detailed description of the effect of immigration on wages and employment of US workers since FY 2000.” There are detailed instructions for the kinds of statistics to be collected, strongly suggesting that the new administration intends to launch a propaganda campaign scapegoating immigrant workers for the further driving down of living standards as a result of the decline of American capitalism.

The Trump administration hopes to pit workers against one another along racial and national lines. Trump is cynically attempting to convince black workers that their enemy is immigrant workers when he claims that undocumented workers have “a devastating impact” on the wages of “African-American” workers. The same applies to Trump’s appeals to “teenage” workers and “disadvantaged youth.”

By claiming that workers’ benefits and social programs are threatened by immigrants, Trump hopes to channel workers’ anger away from the true source of the attacks on living standards: the corporations and banks that dominate Trump’s cabinet and will dictate the policies of his administration.

Far from generating funds that would be used to help working people, the crackdown on immigrants will come at the expense of the entire working class. A recent report from the American Action Forum found that deporting all undocumented workers would cost between $400 and $600 billion. Since Trump also proposes slashing taxes on the wealthy and on corporations, there is no question the working class will foot the bill.

This vast sum will be used to hire an army of lawyers, ICE officers, and to build a network of internment camps to imprison the over 11 million deportees. At a press conference Tuesday of officials of the Department of Homeland Security, the interim head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed, in response to one reporter’s question, that ICE was looking to greatly expand its detention facilities.

The attacks on access to benefits for immigrants are a warning that the government plans to limit access to social programs for all workers. Efforts to kick migrants off of social programs are a sign that the administration’s top priority is cutting spending on public benefits, while drastically expanding government spending on war and police-state surveillance.

The release of the two drafts indicates that the Trump administration is planning to intensify its attacks on immigrants. In so doing, Trump has the support of his newly-appointed Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who pledged his full support for the already enacted executive orders during Tuesday’s press conference.

“This analysis is long overdue and strongly supported by the department’s career intelligence officials,” the ex-Marine general said. Repeating the lies used to justify every attack on democratic rights over the last 15 years, he said: “We cannot gamble with American lives. I will not gamble with American lives. These orders are a matter of national security.”

These words make the Democratic Party politically responsible for every element of the Trump attack on immigration. The overwhelming majority of Democratic senators voted to confirm Kelly last week, including Bernie Sanders, Tim Kaine, Charles Schumer and Al Franken. This exposes the fraud of the Democrats’ proclamations of support for immigrants. It was Democratic President Barack Obama who deported 2.5 million immigrants and who bombed or imposed sanctions on each of the seven countries listed in Trump’s Muslim ban.

The Democratic Party is responsible for passing the laws cited in Trump’s executive orders. The Democrats provided the necessary votes for the passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which was signed by President Bill Clinton, and for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was supported by then-senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Charles Schumer. The opposition to Trump must be built on the basis of a turn to the working class, the class which produces all of society’s wealth and shares common interests across national boundaries.