Millions face economic and social disaster as Wall Street celebrates

Jerry White

The United States economy contracted at a staggering annual rate of 32.9 percent between April and June, the sharpest fall in US history. The actual three-month decline, of 9.5 percent, dwarfed the worst single quarter since such statistics were first collected more than 70 years ago.

It would be difficult to overstate the scale of the economic calamity that has devastated the lives of tens of millions of working people and their families. CNBC noted, “Not the Great Depression nor the Great Recession nor any of the more than three dozen economic slumps over the past two centuries have ever caused such a sharp drain over so short a period of time.”

The only comparable economic disruptions in modern history are those caused by world war or societal collapse. If one calculates the overall drop in US GDP for the first six months of 2020, it comes to 14.75 percent—roughly the amount of the decline in the Russian economy in 1993, the worst of the depression years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The claims of the Trump administration about a “V-shaped” recovery have no more validity than the US president’s ravings about treating coronavirus by swallowing bleach. There are significant signs that after an easing of the downward curve in June, due to widespread state-ordered reopenings, the ensuing resurgence of the pandemic means a new plunge.

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that 1.43 million new claims for unemployment benefits were filed last week, the 19th straight week that new claims have exceeded one million. After declining for months, new claims have risen over the last two weeks.

The number of workers claiming continual unemployment benefits also rose from 16.1 million to 17 million for the week ending July 18. In addition, 830,000 new claims were filed for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which covers self-employed, gig workers and others who do not qualify for tradition jobless benefits.

Under these conditions, the $600-a-week federal supplement to state unemployment benefits is running out today for an estimated 20 million workers. Overnight, millions will see their incomes cut by two-thirds, from an average of $921 a week in May to about $321 a week. In some states, the theft of this lifeline will be even worse. In Oklahoma, jobless aid will be cut by 93 percent to $44 a week.

It is a measure of the precarious situation American workers faced even before the pandemic, that the weekly supplemental assistance and the paying out of a one-time $1,200-per-person “stimulus” check led to a 45 percent increase in personal income in the second quarter. Seventy percent of those who returned to work in June suffered an income loss.

Last week, the moratorium on evictions expired for about 18 million renters—more than a third of the 44 million total US renter households—who live in buildings with mortgages backed by the federal government. With rent bills accumulated over the last four months now due, housing advocates predict a “tsunami” of evictions, with half a million households in Los Angeles alone threatened.

Millions in the US are also going hungry. According to a US Census Bureau survey, food insecurity last week reached its highest reported level since May, with almost 30 million Americans reporting they had not had enough to eat at some point in the seven days through July 21.

After handing trillions to Wall Street and major corporations through the bipartisan CARES Act signed by President Trump in late March, the US Congress is denying the most basic necessities to millions of people. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are deliberately using the specter of poverty, homelessness and starvation as a means to force reluctant workers back into dangerous factories and workplaces in order to resume the flow of corporate profits.

While the economy collapses and tens of millions face hunger, homelessness and destitution, the upper crust of American society have never had it so good. Fueled by the massive injection of money from the Federal Reserve, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen by 42 percent since its low point in late March, and the Nasdaq by 54 percent. Wall Street largely shrugged off the news that the US economy shrank by $1.8 trillion in the second quarter, with the Dow off slightly while the Nasdaq was up.

Even as the death toll surpasses 155,000 in the US and the pandemic rages out of control in Florida, Texas, California and other states, the ruling class is gorging itself. US billionaires, whose wealth increased by 80.6 percent between 2010 and 2020, are seeing another windfall, with another 20 percent increase—a rise of at least $565 billion—since the pandemic began.

The world’s richest man, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has seen his net worth rise $74 billion since the beginning of 2020 to an estimated $189.3 billion. On a single day last week, his personal fortune rose $13 billion after a positive Wall Street forecast led to a rise of his 57 million shares of Amazon stock to $3,232.49 per share. Bezos, who could become the world’s first trillionaire at this rate, is now personally worth more than the market valuation of giants such as Exxon Mobil Corp., Nike Inc. and McDonald’s Corp.

Due to the $200 billion increase in the value of Tesla stock—selling at $1,487.49 per share at the end of the trading day on Thursday—Elon Musk’s net worth has tripled since the pandemic, pushing past the $74 billion mark and making him the fifth-richest person in the world. On July 21, Musk qualified for a stock option payout worth a record $2.1 billion, his second jackpot since May due to Tesla’s 275 percent rise in share values this year.

Both Bezos and Musk have been at the forefront of the drive to force workers to work in their warehouses and factories without basic protections, even as the number of workers who die and are infected in their facilities continues to rise. There is a brutal logic to this: the working class must be forced to pump out the profits needed to pay for the massive increase in government and corporate debt that has been used to fuel the irrational stock market bubble and their personal payouts.

The billionaires have escaped to their private islands, luxury apartments and yachts while the US records one COVID-19 death every minute, and the vast majority of the population faces unprecedented social distress. Last Saturday night, the super-rich partied in The Hamptons, less than 100 miles from New York City, where nearly 23,000 people have perished from the deadly disease. Partygoers spent between $2,500 and $25,000 per person for a concert featuring Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, “who, in addition to running one of the largest and most powerful investment banks in the world,” CNN reported, “is also a part-time electronic dance DJ who goes by the name D-sol while spinning records at clubs in New York and Miami.”

The social catastrophe produced by the pandemic is not a failure of modern medicine, but a failure of capitalism as a social order. COVID-19 did not pose a challenge unfamiliar to medical science; on the contrary, it had been predicted for decades and the necessary countermeasures studied and refined. But the outbreak of the pandemic posed a challenge that the profit system proved incapable of addressing in a humane and rational way. Capitalism has led the working class, and all humanity, into disaster.

The first half of 2020 was characterized by the incompetent, negligent and criminal response to the pandemic by the ruling class. The second half will be dominated by the response of the working class in the US and internationally. Millions of workers, including teachers opposing the reckless rush to reopen schools, are coming into direct political battle against the Trump administration and both capitalist parties. This struggle must be armed with a clear understanding that the protection of lives and livelihoods requires a revolutionary struggle to expropriate the private fortunes of the super-rich, establish workers’ power and carry out the socialist reorganization of economic life to meet the needs of the vast majority, not the wealthy few.

‘Rotational’ Deployment of US Troops: Implications for Regional Security

Sandip Kumar Mishra

On 21 July 2020, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the Pentagon is considering “readjustments” to US’ military presence across the world. They are seeking a “rotational” deployment of forces for “strategic flexibility,” and would like to discontinue permanently stationing them in any one location. The Wall Street Journal had reported just a few days prior that the US Department of Defense had been pondering this option since at least December 2019. The US announcement in June 2020 to withdraw around 10,000 troops from Germany could be part of the new plan. Although the US Congress has proposed in the 2021 National Defense Authorisation Act that troops would be reduced only if it does not adversely affect US national interests, and is based on sufficient consultation with allies, the Trump administration’s intent is quite obvious.

The US readjustment plan is justified on the grounds that it is meant to deal with an ‘assertive’ China, who, apart from its dubious role in the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, is trying to take advantage of the global crisis and change the status-quo in the South China Sea, East China Sea, Hong Kong, China-India border, and so on.

In fact, over the past few weeks, the US has made several strong pronouncements along with a few moves to demonstrate resolve in response to China’s assertiveness. However, this show of resolve cannot be separated from the Pentagon’s proposal for ‘rotational’ redeployment of forces. At least two important questions must be asked. One, does the readjustment plan means more, or less, US  commitment to counterbalance China in the region? Two, will the plan be beneficial or detrimental to emerging collective counter-balancing efforts against China?

The moorings and unfolding of the readjustment plan reveal it to be an abandonment of the US commitment to allies across the globe. Since he became president, Donald Trump has insisted on allies paying more for the presence of US troops in their countries. He seems incapable of appreciating the US’ long and multilayered relations with these allies, and has been asking for an unreasonable increase in cost-sharing, failing which, as per his threats, US troops would be withdrawn.

Although the plan only suggests moving US troops from one location to another, this will largely mean their partial or full withdrawal from current locations. It is important to note that it will not be easy to re-locate these troops to other areas without formal agreements with new host countries.

This will lead to a further reduction in trust between the US and its time-tested security allies in various regions. These allies would be concerned about the Trump administration’s unilateral decision-making on the reduction or readjustment of troops that were initially stationed in these countries through bilateral agreements. For them, it will mean a US that is not as committed to their security needs as before. As per a recent survey by the Pew Research Centre, most US allies find the US under Donald Trump less reliable. New US partners will not be able to ignore this perspective as they work to forge long-term strategic relations. If the US can unilaterally dilute commitments to old allies, it may do so with new partners as well.

In such a scenario, any emerging collective contestation with China will ultimately be weakened. US troops were deployed to partner countries in the region as a bulwark against challenges to the status quo. The US role in maintaining this status quo was operationalised by fully committing to protect a few frontline states, rather than promising to protect all. The new strategy to dilute the commitment to a select few by spreading it thin without much specificity or binding security guarantees is, in effect, a dilution of the commitment. The US is basically trying to delegate to others its primary role as counterbalance to China, and offer non-committal security assistance in a crisis situation. Washington thus intends to play second-fiddle by renouncing its erstwhile role as the prime security guarantor.

This is indeed a decisive time for international politics. China is resolutely revising the regional order, and the existing superpower is trying to delegate its own work to other frontline states. The US plan for the readjustment of its troops must be seen in this context—that it essentially means an abandonment of the country’s commitment to regional and global security.

Big Google and Facebook are Watching You!

Thomas Klikauer & Nadine Campbell

Today, the Internet is everywhere. Well over half of the planet’s entire population either likes to be on the Internet or has to rely on the web for business, work, and social engagement. People read the news, send notes to loved ones, birthday cards, do their job – increasingly via Skype and Zoom. Others seek answers to an urgent question. More than four billion people see the Internet as central to the way how they communicate, learn, study, go shopping, participate in the business, and organise themselves socially as well as politically.

Among the big five or what the French like to call GAFMA – Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple – two corporations stand out: Google and Facebook. They are euphemistically called “social media”. In fact, they are hardly social. Instead, they are profit-making multinational corporations. In some countries, Facebook has become synonymous with the Internet – a dream of every monopolist. Simultaneously, Google occupies the largest share of all online searches. Search engines are a crucial source of information, and monopolist Google accounts for around 90% of all searches. These two monopolists complement each other. One holds the monopoly of Internet searches while the other holds the monopoly over social engagement.

As much as we like Google and Facebook, these Internet platforms come at a substantial cost. Both corporations apply what a recent Amnesty International report describes as a “surveillance-based business model”. It turns people – users – into sellable products who are sold to advertisers. Facebook and Google users get free services but are sold for a profit. It follows what the economists say – “There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch”. This means someone has to pick up the tab.

In the case of Facebook and Google, it is the advertisers who pay Facebook and Google to provide the services many like and rely on. In the language of managerialist CEOs, it is “we don’t monetize the things we create, we monetize users”. Click on to Facebook and Google, and you instantly become a product to be sold.

To perfect their business model, Facebook and Google seek to know as much about their product –you – as possible to sell advertisers what they want, namely a cohort for targeted marketing. It is the opposite of Coca Cola’s marketing. Advertisers don’t want what to target a massive amount of people who don’t use their product. To those, Coca ads are useless – a waste of money for Coca Cola.

Instead, advertisers want to target their ads more precisely. As a consequence of this system, a minute after you have searched for baby food on Google or Facebook, for example, the first ad for baby food comes to you. This is how it works. Except that Facebook and Google have created a gigantic surveillance apparatus to spy on their customers to be able to sell to advertisers what they most want. And this is where the problem comes in.

Facebook and Google collect a huge amount of data on what we search, what we look at, where we go on the net, who we talk to, what we say and write, what we read, what we buy, etc. This is not just an intrusion into the lives of billions of people globally, but an outright assault on privacy. The abuse of privacy is part – actually “the” core – of Facebook and Google’s business model. It engineers profits.

One of the most noted and perhaps most severe cases remains Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica. The scandal involved data from 87 million people’s Facebook profiles. These were harvested and used to micro-target and manipulate people for political campaigning. It was the application of Facebook’s business model to the political advertisements that supported Donald Trump.

Much of this can occur because Facebook and Google operate in a still mostly unregulated area or as Google CEO, Eric Schmidt once said, “the world’s most ungoverned space.” So much for the neoliberal myth that business is drowning in red tape. For Facebook and Google, there is no tape, never mind red tape.

Lacking regulation and oversight, Facebook and Google became giants. Google makes 84% and Facebook makes 98% of their profits from advertising. Appropriately, both corporations should be called marketing corporations and not social media. On the Internet, Facebook and Google hold a duopoly – a world that sounds so much nicer than what they really are: monopolies. Again, and again, reality disproves neoliberalism’s claim – there is a free market. In the world of Facebook and Google, there is no free market. To them, neoliberalism is nothing but a useful ideology to con the public, great public relations – nothing more.

Typically for monopolists, Facebook and Google have cartelised social networking and searching the Internet. Facebook moves towards the three billion-member margin, while Google runs 90% of all searches. For many, without Facebook and Google, there would be no Internet. To perfect their system, both corporations increasingly rely on state of the art artificial intelligence (AI). Additionally, both are serious hoarders when it comes to collecting and storing data. Facebook and Google hold very serious data vaults furnished by a speedy decline in the cost of data storage.

Beyond AI and data hoarding, Facebook and Google are ready to apply their monopoly to the next two Internet frontiers: the Internet of things (IoT) as well as understanding (read: entering) the human brain. In the not too distant future, Facebook’s Portal and Google’s Home Assistant will be able to link your iPad to your phone, your TV, your fridge, your heating system, and your automatic sprinklers. To pay for all this, Facebook has moved into a new global currency called Libra. In other words, your money is no longer safe and nor is your health. Facebook has been given access to patient data in the UK already. These are only the things we know about. But as Donald Rumsfeld who once said,

“there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know”.

In other words, there is an awful lot we do not know about Facebook and Google. Just as the author of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff says about Facebook and Google, “they know everything about us; we know almost nothing about them.” The same could be said about the CIA, Gestapo, KGB, MI5, NSA, Stasi, etc.

Facebook and Google also hoard metadata. This is data about data. For example, the data your computer saves behind each picture you store: date, time, location, etc. For Facebook and Google, this includes email recipients, location records, and the timestamp on emails and photos. In other words, Facebook and Google know about the juicy photos you received from your partner last night! The myth of privacy is only for those who still believe sending something via the Internet is not like sending a postcard – everyone can read it.

It is also for those who mistakenly believe “I have nothing to hide!” IT security experts like to reply, “give me your credit card and pin number and drop your pants”. Of course, we have all have something to hide. Private security experts talk about rings of privacy we have around us. These privacy rings become successively more private, the closer they become.

Much of this has very serious implications. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests that when Facebook and Google analysed metadata, they create insights into people’s intimate behaviour, social relationships, private preferences, and identity. Unlike the CIA, Gestapo MI5, and Stasis, they are not so interested in your as a petit-bourgeois revolutionary, but as a consumer. And for that, it is helpful to predict patterns of behaviour. Facebook and Google know that you need contraceptives before you know it.

To understand our sexual identity, political views, personality traits, or consumption patterns, Facebook and Google use sophisticated algorithmic models. As the aforementioned, Eric Schmidt says, “we know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about”. In that the old PR dream comes true: we cannot tell you what to think, but we can tell you what to think about. We make you think about Pizzagate and Hillary Clinton’s child pornography ring, and you vote Trump! It may not be that simple for some people, but propaganda has always worked for some. Beyond that always lurks the intrusion into privacy, violating three basic principles:

1) the freedom from intrusion into our private lives;

2) the right to control information about ourselves; and

3) the right to a space in which we can freely express our identities.

The surveillance-based business model of Google and Facebook undercuts each one of these three elements. The fact that Facebook and Google are harvesting, analysing, and most importantly, monetisation our data remains absolutely central to their business model. This has a grave impact on our three privacy rights. Not surprisingly, the above mentioned UN commissioner emphasises that Facebook and Google’s analytical power of data-driven technology carries very serious risks for people and societies. This can hardly be overestimated.

For Facebook and Google, this colonisation of privacy remains imperative. Facebook and Google use fine-grained, sub-conscious and personalised algorithmic persuasion technologies which significantly impact on the cognitive autonomy of individuals and their right to form opinions and take independent decisions. Machine learning is now able to scan Instagram posts for signs of depression more reliably than human reviewers. Facebook told advertisers, it could judge when teenagers were feeling insecure, worthless, or needed a confidence boost. Link this to TikTok, and you realise that they know more about your teenage daughter than you do.

Teenagers might like to appear on TikTok and Facebook, but that is likely to lead to social isolation. Facebook, despite the promises of Mark Zuckerberg, easily leads people to become isolated from one another as each individual engages with their own highly personalised experience of Facebook. This increases as Facebook provides information that is ever more uniquely tailored to them based on algorithmically driven profiling.

Such tailoring can easily manipulate people’s political opinions. It is the micro-targeting of political messaging, which is able to limit people’s freedom. Paradoxically, the more people express themselves on Facebook; the more Facebook creates and fosters a worldview that is actually inhospitable to pluralistic political engagement. It creates echo-chambers and polarises people into an us-vs.-them groups. These are rabbit holes of toxic content.

On the one hand, Facebook has already admitted that it is intentionally making people addictive. On the other hand, it systematically privileges extreme content, including conspiracy theories, misogyny, accidental misinformation and deliberate disinformation, as well as racism. This keeps people on their platforms for as long as possible. The sensational eliminates the rational. Perhaps Facebook more than Google, spreads anti-refugee sentiment, for example. It fosters anti-refugee sentiment online. This can easily lead to hate crimes. It is not surprising to see that in many countries and, in poll after poll, people overestimate the level of foreigners in their country. This was to be expected because of Facebook and Google’s algorithm privilege false and incendiary content.

In sum, their unique position as the two prime gatekeepers to the Internet has allowed Facebook and Google to have a significant influence over people. People are more or less stuck with two monopolists because for many leaving Facebook and Google is no longer a realistic option. Even when this means that Facebook and Google have quietly erased privacy, the unavoidable conclusion is that Facebook and Google can afford to abuse privacy because people have no choice but to accept their dictate.

This phenomenon is known as network effect – the more users a platform has, the more valuable it becomes. The value of Facebook and Google is undeniable. In the case of Facebook, it is even worse. Many people join Facebook because their friends are on Facebook. This makes it harder for them to leave. At a corporate level, Facebook and Google have created an area surrounding them in which competitors can no longer take root. It kills new entrees, and it kills competition. This is known as Facebook and Google’s kill zone.

As a fig leaf, the state can never grow tired of pretending to uphold one of neoliberalism’s fundamental ideologies, the free market. The liberal state also pretends to protect individuals. As a consequence, in June 2019, for example, the US Federal Trade Commission levied a record $5bn penalty against Facebook. At this time, Facebook was valued at $140bn. In other words, it is a fine of 3% of Facebook’s value – it’s a bit like a $3 speeding fine to ordinary people. Not surprisingly, when the Mickey Mouse fine was announced, Facebook’s share price went up – perhaps because the FTC did not impose a significant enough fine. A $3 speeding ticket is not a meaningful fine.

Even more laughable was a French court’s €50 million ($58 million) fine against Google. Google is a multinational corporation with a net worth of $280bn. A $50m fine translates into 50,000,000. Google’s $280bn represents 280,000,000,000. Put differently and not to confuse millions with billions; the French fine represents one 5,600^th of Goggles value. Rest assured, Google was shaking with laughter. Inconsequential fines like these tell corporations one thing: carry on! There is no corporate criminality.

Fines against corporations of the size of quantum particles for which you need to Hadron Collider to find them in their corporate reports are possible, in part, because powerful lobbying has made these corporations untouchable. Corporate lobbying assures that Facebook and Google pay next to no taxes – unlike us – but it also assures such corporations that they get off the hook easily.

Like many other corporations, Facebook and Google run extensive corporate lobbying operations. This is part of the business just as it is for the Mafia to pay off a police officer or judge or both. Google spent more money than any other company to lobby the EU, followed by Microsoft, Shell and Facebook. In 2018, Google spent $21.2 million in lobbying the US Government (up 17.6%). By comparison, Facebook had spent $12.6 million (up 9.6%).

Apart from this, Facebook and Google also engage in propaganda – or public relations as it is called nowadays. Propaganda just sounds bad. As the Godfather of US public relations, Edwards Bernays once said,

When I came back to the United States … “propaganda” got to be a bad word because the Germans using it, so what I did was to try and find some other words, so we found the words “public relations”.

To make its “corporate propaganda work” (truth) or “engage in public relations” (PR-talk), Facebook and Google fund a wide range of think tanks to bolster their arguments and to make these arguments public. For example, both corporations, their lobbyists, and their think tanks foster the argument that tech companies cannot be regulated – utter nonsense, but it works.

In the end, two multinational corporations virtually run the Internet as monopolists raking in tremendous profits. The business model they use turns users into products. These are then sold to advertisers. Best of all, we are made to believe that these corporations are social media. In reality, they are monopolists that have made serious inroads into people’s privacy.

With the advent of artificial intelligence, this will only get worse. AI is most likely to advance the fastest and furthest on Facebook and Google. Both have the funding and, more importantly, the drive (read: profits) to push AI. Once they have linked AI to IoT (the Internet of things), Facebook and Google might become not only more powerful but also more indispensable. With that, an all-new Super-Google-Facebook-Big-Brother will be watching you!

How Bad is the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act?

Charles Pierson

Somehow, Congress couldn’t find the time last week to renew extended unemployment benefits or the federal moratorium on evictions. Congress had something more pressing to think about than 30 million unemployed Americans: the Pentagon budget. On July 21 and 23, the House of Representatives and the Senate approved their versions of the Pentagon’s annual spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. To paraphrase Douglas Adams’ comment about the universe, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 is big. Really big. Weighing in at $740.5 billion, the NDAA for FY 2021 casts its Brobdingnagian shadow over the military budgets of the next eleven countries combined.

It didn’t need to be that big. Earlier in the week, the House and Senate rejected amendments to the NDAA which would have reduced next year’s Pentagon budget by 10%. A 10% cut would have made $74 billion available for responding to the coronavirus pandemic and other needs of people who aren’t generals.

The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2021 gives the Pentagon $2½ billion more than last year’s NDAA. This will surprise no one who has noticed that defense spending has increased every year under President Donald Trump, relentless fighter against “endless wars.” Senate Republicans are trying to sneak an additional $21 billion for the military into the latest coronavirus relief bill. Eleven billion dollars of that will go straight to defense contractors.

Gargantuan the 2021 NDAA undeniably is. At the same time, the $740.5 billion figure is misleadingly low. Richard Escow points out (Counterpunch, July 7, 2020) that each year’s NDAA excludes the intelligence budget, the Department of Homeland Security budget, and a healthy chunk of the Department of Energy budget devoted to nuclear weapons.

Antiwar Amendments Disappear Like Magic!

Its monstrous size is not the only troubling thing about the NDAA.

Last year’s House version of the NDAA included several much-needed progressive amendments, including several antiwar amendments, which were stripped in conference. This year, progressives are having an even tougher time getting antiwar amendments into the NDAA. Here’s how the NDAA addresses (or fails to address) some major world conflicts.

Yemen

Since 2015, the US has helped a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates kill as many as 12,000 civilians in Yemen. The US has provided intelligence sharing, target spotting, arms sales, spare parts for coalition aircraft, and (until November 2018) in-flight refueling of coalition warplanes—all without the consent of Congress. Some lawmakers have been attempting to reassert Congress’ Constitutional prerogative as the sole branch of government with the power to take the US to war. On April 16, 2019, President Donald Trump vetoed an historic War Powers Resolution passed by Congress which would have forced the US either to end its assistance to the coalition or obtain authorization from Congress. Experts believe that without US assistance, the Saudi war effort would be crippled or impossible.

Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, introduced an amendment to last year’s NDAA which would have cut off US funds to assist the Saudis, Emiratis, and their coalition partners. Khanna’s amendment made it into the House version of the NDAA for FY 2020, but was stripped in conference. This year, Khanna has introduced a similar amendment. Khanna’s amendment was approved by the House Armed Services Committee on July 1 and is included in the FY 2021 NDAA passed by the full House on July 23.

Another amendment introduced by Representative Khanna and adopted by the House requires the administration to issue an annual report describing the logistical support, military equipment, military training, and services the US has provided to the Saudi-led coalition.

The report will also describe the war’s impact on humanitarian assistance entering Yemen. Good. Maybe the report can explain why the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has decided to abandon Yemenis, including children, to die of starvation and disease. USAID cut $73 million in humanitarian aid for Yemen in March, affecting 80% of Yemen’s people. The US says that the move is necessary because Yemen’s Houthi rebels divert humanitarian assistance. Relief experts, however, say that that problem can be addressed without canceling the bulk of Yemen’s aid.

The cruelty of the US move is staggering. Scott Paul of Oxfam America writes that “Due to a funding shortfall exacerbated by USAID’s suspension, six million Yemenis, including three million children, will lose access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services.” Hassan El-Tayyab, a Middle East specialist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, says that “Yemen needs $1 billion to make it through the end of the year.”

The coronavirus pandemic has struck an already malnourished and immunocompromised population. Saudi bombing has destroyed much of Yemen’s sanitary and medical facilities, in violation of international humanitarian law prohibiting the targeting of hospitals. The UN hesitates to deliver a full-throated condemnation of Saudi war crimes because it can’t risk provoking the Saudis into cutting off the pittance of aid they provide Yemen.

Afghanistan

As of July 2, the US had 8,600 troops in Afghanistan. Trump has said that he wants to reduce that number. But in the case of America’s longest-running war, Congress—including Democrats—is making the belligerent Trump look like a Dove. On July 1, by a vote of 60-33, the Senate tabled an amendment to the NDAA from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) which would have removed all US troops from Afghanistan and rescinded the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force in Afghanistan.

The House has gone a step further. DefenseOne notes that the House Armed Services Committee “outright prohibited the use of funds to cut the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan below 8,000 unless the administration submits a series of counterterrorism certifications that are impossible for any nation to meet” (i.e., that US troop withdrawal would not strengthen the Afghan Taliban).

Germany

The president also wants to withdraw 9,500 of the 35,000 US troops currently stationed in Germany. However, the House Armed Services Committee adopted, 49-7, an amendment which prohibits the Trump Administration from reducing the number of troops in Germany unless the Pentagon certifies the troop reduction will not harm the security of the US or its allies—a condition impossible to meet. The amendment has been included in the House version of the NDAA.

Iran

Several pieces of legislation have been introduced in Congress to prohibit President Trump from launching a war with Iran without Congressional authorization. On January 3, 2020, Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike. A War Powers Resolution on Iran passed shortly thereafter as tensions between the US and Iran looked like they would escalate to full out war. President Trump vetoed the resolution on May 6. The Senate was unable to muster the two-thirds supermajority necessary to override the president’s veto.

That resolution was unconnected to the NDAA. An amendment to the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2021 meant to block war with Iran absent Congress’ approval was introduced by Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), but failed to make it into the House version of the bill.

Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) has also introduced an amendment—not to the NDAA, but to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2021—meant to prevent war with Iran. This amendment (and two other amendments from Representative Lee which would rescind the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force) has been adopted by the House Appropriations Committee. (Lee was the only member of Congress to vote against the 2001 AUMF. Her colleagues should have listened to her.)

Veto?

There is one provision shared by the House and Senate versions of the NDAA which we have not touched on. It requires the renaming of US military bases named after Confederate military figures, of which there are an embarrassing number. President Trump has threatened to veto the NDAA if this provision is in the final bill. Someone should set President Trump’s mind at rest. We can give new names to our military bases. We can topple the statues of racists long dead. Unfortunately, racism in America isn’t going away anytime soon.

The Capitalism Virus — Etymology of an Epidemic

Amulya Anita Gurumurthy

Five months into the pandemic, it is evident that the government is in denial. The political rhetoric is harking back a failed status quoism, with grand delusions of recovery. Rather than call for a complete reset and reconfiguration of the prevailing order, the Indian government’s approach to tackling the pandemic betrays an overwhelming faith in business-as-usual. The economic fallouts of the pandemic have prompted several questions. What does the response to COVID-19 say about the state’s vision for the economy, in general? What does it reveal about the material basis of policy, and the interests that state actions invariably promote?

The steady state of crisis capitalism

“Unless the government takes proactive measures, we are falling off a cliff,” warned Jayati Ghosh, two months into the crisis, and today, it seems that the government’s actions have done everything to accelerate this fall. The pandemic, however, is merely the spark that lit the powder keg. Underlying its origins are structural causes of the capitalist neo-liberal order. In addressing COVID-19, the Government of India has acted entirely in cahoots with big capital, reposing unflinching faith in the illusory equilibrium driven ostensibly by market forces. This, even as the pandemic has revealed the deep fault-lines that go back to a broken system.

The economic crises that nation states are witnessing is a function of the pre-COVID capitalist order. The massive unemployment, disruptions in supply chains and soaring debt are not produced by the pandemic; they are directly attributable to the crisis-prone nature intrinsic to capitalism. As Harvey argues, the approach adopted by the government in addressing any crisis, dictates the nature of the next. The flexible monetary policy measures employed to rectify the 2008 financial crisis enabled the capitalist class to borrow at nearly zero percent interest rates, creating inflationary pressures in the economy. Prices in stock markets surged far above their real economic values, while simultaneously inequality burgeoned. The pandemic was the proverbial straw of an unsustainable economic order, an expression of the inherent vulnerabilities of the system.

The effect of this current crisis however, is going to be far more acute than previous recessions, given the combined collapse in supply and demand. Shortage of raw materials is likely to result in cost push inflation. Supply chains are already being disrupted by the shut down of factories and increasing unemployment. Escalating economic inequality and decreasing consumption on the other hand are adversely impacting aggregate demand. Goldman Sachs estimates that India will experience its gravest recession yet.

Coronacapitalism – mutations of the status quo

Originally, the year 2020 was projected to witness a decline in poverty, with 14 million individuals rising above the poverty line. But the pandemic has set us back ruinously; the revised figure hypothesises that a lower limit of 8.8 million additional individuals will find themselves in working poverty. With respect to India, the 6.1 % unemployment figure from 2017-18, the highest in 45 years, seems like good news in comparison to what we can now expect. By the end of April 2020, 140 million workers had lost their jobs, and 27% of the workforce had been rendered unemployed. The central government’s deliberate policy of non-intervention to support workers in the informal economy has enlarged the reserve army of labour. It has ensured that wages are depressed, and the working population, kept in check. Strengthening the interests of the bourgeoisie at the peril of the proletariat, the government’s response to the pandemic dangerously, albeit unsurprisingly, embraces yet again, the heady logic of capital.

In the initial days, when the lockdown led to a cascading impact on the economy, with real estate, aviation, tourism and micro, small and medium enterprises bearing the brunt of the recession, the Confederation of Indian Industry met with the labour minister, Santosh Gangwar, insisting that the government orders workers to resume production. They further argued that in the event that workers refuse to return to the workplace, they should be held liable under the Industrial Disputes Act. In Karnataka, after consulting the cement lobby (anxious about an imminent demand shock), Chief Minister, Yediyurappa, cancelled trains that were to transport migrants back to their villages. Evidently, when it is labour alone that adds value to the production process, capitalists in collusion with the government are eager to go to any lengths to deprive workers of the right to withdraw their labour power, even when in duress. This marks a return to corvee labour or forced labour, which characterises feudal societies. The pandemic has simply and starkly dispelled the smokescreen of capitalist ideology, underlining how rather than the inventiveness and organisational capabilities of capitalist entrepreneurs, it is labour that is required for the production of commodities and extraction of surplus.

The humanitarian crisis wrought by the pandemic has been exacerbated by the government’s callous economic decisions. Research conducted by SWAN in April 2020 indicated that 92% of migrant labourers had not received rations from the government. India is slated to join some of the world’s poorest countries adding to the projected numbers of hunger deaths owing to the pandemic. The government is yet to universalise the public distribution system, though the Food Corporation of India’s godowns hold 98 million tonnes of wheat and rice. Instead, it has sought to covert the surplus grain to ethanol, in order to blend it with petrol. A central question of economics is regarding the distribution of scarce resources. Given this, the government’s policy measures have resulted in allocative inefficiency, with the interests of the working population being summarily dismissed. As, Sanjeev Sharma, a taxi driver, said in the early days of the virus, “Some people will die of the virus. The rest of us will die of hunger”.

Nivedita Menon has coined the term ‘Coronacapitalism’ to refer to how in the course of the pandemic, the state has entirely been subordinated to the interests of the bourgeoisie. The economic package announced by the Modi government attests to this, with deregulation and pro-free market reforms being implemented in all sectors of the economy. Agricultural markets have been opened up, with the removal of laws governing the prices and stocks of produce. This will lead to greater centralisation of capital, with powerful traders establishing monopolies and foreign companies crushing local farmers. Additionally, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Gujarat have amended labour laws, eroding the paltry protection workers possessed. These labour reforms deny workers the right to toilet breaks, ventilation, protective equipment, weekly holidays and disallow the formation of trade unions. The bourgeoisie, it seems, has waged a class war against the proletariat, denying them of their basic entitlements in order to increase the rate of accumulation.

The government’s assumption that capital will flock to India due to its weak labour laws is empirically flawed. Foreign investment exiting China has largely flown into Vietnam and Thailand; countries which have more robust labour laws. As economists critical of the neo-liberal paradigm argue, the Indian government should have adopted a Keynesian model and implemented expansionary fiscal policies. Rather than adopting a policy of decisive intervention, the government’s response to the crisis has been dictated by the whims of capital.

How inequalities have shaped the cartography of COVID

In a society that is deeply stratified, the adverse socio-economic outcomes of the pandemic are bound to disproportionately affect marginalised social groups. Women workers are more likely to be dismissed and to suffer pay cuts. Women constitute the reserve army, forced out of labour markets during periods of economic slowdown. Like gender, caste too is relevant in tracing the contours of the crisis. The leisure industry was instrumental in pumping demand into the economy post the 2008 financial crisis, thereby salvaging capitalism. However, today, the norm of social distancing is leading to ‘COVID Brahminism’, institutionalising caste hierarchies and legitimising practices of untouchability through registers of hygiene. Restaurant businesses – desperate as they are – want to win back consumers through bio-surveillance of delivery boys and kitchen staff. Your home-delivered pizza bill now has details of body temperatures of workers, a perverse state of transparency that applies to those condemned to everyday struggle by our class-caste structures.

The development divides of the world mean that some countries are going to be affected by the pandemic far more severely than others. The United States can restore its own economy, as the sole holder of the world’s reserve currency. Developed nations are also able to adopt sizeable fiscal packages, with Japan spending 20% of its GDP in addressing the crisis. On the other hand, developing nations are confronted by depreciation, capital flight and falling remittances. Significantly, their ability to adopt expansionary measures is circumscribed due to their fear of exclusion from the international market. Thus, contrary to assumptions that the virus doesn’t discriminate, the economic fallout of the pandemic manifests in a profoundly unequal manner.

The COVID crisis has lifted the curtains, revealing the exploitative underpinnings of the current socio-economic order. It is a wake up call for an alternate economic system that is equitable and caters to the interests of the working class rather than to the minuscule section that owns the means of production. Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures, and capital’s impulse to colonise must be reined in boldly and unequivocally. A blatantly class collaborationist line of government policy is bound to push the dispossessed majority off the cliff, with the capitalist class rejoicing in the bountiful panorama of renewed accumulation.

Globalisation of Capitalist Crises

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

The post pandemic economic recovery looks uncertain and the economic growth projections look gloomy in every stretch of policy paradigm within capitalist imaginations. The strong and existing multilateral cooperation within the Westphalian international system is falling apart and facing its existential threats due to its entrenched Eurocentric bias, democratic deficits and institutional dominance by the erstwhile colonial powers. The world is moving into a long-term crisis within capitalism. The capitalist system has failed to offer any viable alternatives to recover from the crises. It is rather deepening the globalisation of crises and miseries among the masses. The predicaments of hunger, homelessness and unemployment are growing. The idea of accessibility, availability and distribution of essential goods and services are becoming difficult. The markets are shrinking and sinking. Both the producers and consumers are facing the crises in their everyday lives.

The follies of globalisation and its flickers continue to be in denial mode. These illiberal charlatans of power live in the cocoons of their privileged ghettos and argue vehemently that the current crisis is not a capitalist crisis or crisis of globalisation. There is concocted propaganda that the crisis is a product of greedy and irrational individuals, inefficient governments and unproductive states. The free market led systems are only viable and competent alternatives.  These reactionary and ahistorical narratives help capitalism by arguing that the current economic, social, political, environmental and Coronavirus led global health crises are products of state and government failures.

The right-wing economists, liberal commentators, salary seeking intellectuals and consultants in different thinktanks continue to glorify and provide ideological justification to capitalist globalisation by hiding its absolute failures in deepening egalitarian democracy, peace and prosperity. The globalisation of crises under capitalism serves four objectives of the ruling and non-ruling classes. Firstly, these ridiculous propaganda makes people reject the state and government they have formed with the help of their collective will. Secondly, it diminishes citizens faith in their own abilities and own intellect. It weakens and diverts them to analyse and reflect on their own realities. Thirdly, it weakens the state and destroys the capabilities of the governments as instruments of social, economic, political and cultural change for common good based on scientific spirit and progressive future. Finally, it destroys democratic cultures by replacing it with authoritarianism that is concomitant with the requirements of capitalism for its growth. In this way, the fake narratives of reactionary politics and global capitalism helps to achieve these four specific objectives, which are central pillars in establishing authoritarianism accelerated by crises. The globalisation of capitalist crises means globalisation of authoritarian politics and vice versa.

The world is facing six major immanent capitalist crises i.e. i) Coronavirus pandemic led global health crises, ii) environmental crises, iii) economic crises, iv) political crises, v) military crises, and vi) crises of governance. These six crises are integral to each other. One crisis triggers the other. It is impossible to address them separately. Therefore, it needs an integrated and pluriversal approach to understand and address these crises together and find reliable alternatives.

Coronavirus pandemic led global health crises

The Coronavirus pandemic reveals that spill over of virus from their natural habitat to human body is associated with the burgeoning wildlife trade, deforestation and loss of natural wildlife habitat due to over exploitation of nature under capitalism. The monetisation of nature for profit is the foundation of health pandemics. According to a recent research, two viruses enter into human body from their natural hosts every year for a century now. The Coronavirus led health crisis and other forms of global health crises are products of capitalism, which considers human body and nature as resources to be used for the expansion of capitalist profit. It also uses sickness as business opportunities for health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations. The profit driven healthcare and economic system breeds health crises across the globe. The Coronavirus led pandemic is aggravating existing health crises due to privatisation of public health infrastructures and corporatisation of health services. The alternative is to look at health as human rights and abandon the economic model that seeks profit from illness and business of sickness. The nationalisation and universalisation of healthcare is the only alternative.

Environmental crises

The unprecedented environmental crisis is not natural. The environment is degraded and destabilised by the growth of a desire-based society under capitalism.  The magnitude and severity of environmental crisis reveals that capitalist economic system creates grave imbalance within the ecosystem by over exploiting natural resources. From global warming to pollutions and contaminations are the products of the productivist and utilitarian ideology of capitalism, which monetised the environment for the maximisation of profit. It has ruined the land, water and air. The outbreak of air and waterborne diseases are products of environmental crisis manufactured by capitalist system. The irreparable damage to environment is a threat to human lives. The environmental crisis aggravates global economic and health crisis. The reversal of profit driven desire-based capitalist economy is inevitable for a sustainable economic and social future.

Economic crises

Economic crisis is integral to capitalism. The faux neoliberal narrative of austerity as an economic policy alternative to recover from economic crisis is the logic of market on steroids. Austerity is not an economic policy but it is an economic project of the capitalist classes, which enforces economic miseries, political despondency and social alienation on majority of population. The voodoo of austerity and its alconomics culture reproduces crisis and empowers market forces by transferring public resources to the private pockets of the capitalist classes. The only way to recover from the crisis in short run is to abandon austerity driven neoliberal economic policies. The permanent alternative from crisis is to destroy capitalism and all its cultures with the help of popular struggles for a sustainable economy and society based on community and democratic control over resources.

Political crises

The neoliberal shift in economy led to the shift from welfarists social democracy to bourgeois democracy, where uninhibited market forces rule with their invisible free hand. The growth of island of prosperity and continents of miseries are the net outcomes of such a system, which led to the declining legitimacy of the democratic political forces. In this context, there is the rise of reactionary religious and conservative social forces are not only filling the vacuum but also providing legitimacy to the rule of capitalist politics in the name of culture, religion, and nationalism. The recent political upheavals within liberal democracies in different parts of the globe reflects this right-wing shift and reactionary trend in politics. The political crisis is an opportunity for the capitalist classes to dismantle all democratic norms and values in support of authoritarianism. In this decisive period of structural crisis of capitalism, it is only authoritarian politics that can help capitalism to further accumulate at this stage of its growth. The collective politics with collective vision is the only alternative for the survival of the masses.

Military crises

The authoritarian and reactionary political regimes breed conflicts, disputes and wars to stay in power and control resources. The global growth of nationalist war hysteria is producing military crises in land, ocean, air and space. It is also fueling international arms trade. The colonial, imperialist and capitalist powers consider military crisis is an opportunity to expand their economic base by selling weapons of mass destruction. The guns and capitalist globalisation move together. The military-industrial complex is deepening the idea of security state led by the defence forces that ensures security to capital at the cost of human lives. The states and governments are spending all their resources on military equipment when citizens are suffering in hunger and homelessness. The military crisis puts citizens welfare in the dustbin. The global growth of defence spending is a threat to environment, human lives, peace and prosperity in the world.

Crises of governance

The world is witnessing the growing crisis of global, regional, national and local governance. The crisis of governance means crisis of rule of law, transparency and accountability. The criminogenic character of capitalism prefers a non-transparent and unaccountable system, which provides absolute freedom to the mobility of capital and control labour and its mobility with different legal mechanisms.  The laws are for the masses and the capitalist classes live with legal impunity. This capitalist duality is central in creating crisis of governance.  The growth of economic and social inequalities, rise of political illegitimacies and illiberal thoughts are also led to the crisis of governance. The struggle for liberal, progressive, egalitarian, cooperative and democratic governance is the only alternative which is destroyed by capitalism in regular intervals.

These six crises are intrinsic capitalism to overcome its own internal contradictions. The different incarnations of capitalism reveal that capitalism is an incubator of crises. There is no alternative to solve crises within capitalism. The globalisation is the diminuendos of capitalist world economy, which promised peace and prosperity but in reality, it is globalising crises and miseries. The astrologers of capitalism have lost all their gods and worshiping false god of propaganda has expired its usable date. The idolatry of capitalist falsehood is not an alternative to recover from the crisis of its own making.  It is time to learn from our experiences with capitalist catastrophe and its history of crises. There is no individual freedom within capitalism in which majority suffer. Our individual freedoms are interlinked with collective emancipation. The glocal emancipatory struggle against capitalism is the only alternative for a collective future based on liberty, equality, justice and fraternity. The national socialism is only possible with practice of internationalism. The worldwide collective actions and resistance movements can revise and re-establish the hidden glory of socialism as only alternative.