More than half of England's population are under tougher social restrictions, due to the three-tier localised COVID-19 framework introduced by the Johnson government.
The restrictions are largely ineffectual as educational institutions and workplaces—the largest source of infections—remain open in every tier. These localised tiers are part of the national alert level, currently set at four, which is set by the Joint Biosecurity Centre.
Established in May, little is known about the JBC, except that it is modelled on the UK's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and is overseen by spy chiefs. But it is this body that is setting the government's pandemic response.
According to the British Medical Journal, the purpose of the JBC is to provide “independent, real time national and local analysis of infections” and to “build on the UK’s public health infrastructure and surveillance network... to understand the COVID-19 threat at any given time.” It will provide information to local public health teams, such as “levels of hospital bed occupancy, including critical care beds; the number of local people who have tested positive and registered with the track and trace service, and the number of their contacts who have been identified; and mortality data.”
Some £9 billion is being invested in the JBC. Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty told the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on July 17 that “so much resource has rightly had to be put into the JBC … because … we really have not invested in health protection over the last several years.”
The decision to invest in this secretive body, rather than the National Health Service (NHS) which is struggling to function after years of austerity and privatisation, confirms that the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic has nothing to do with safeguarding public health and saving lives. It is part of the policy of herd immunity, while using the pandemic to restructure economic and social relations and strengthen the state apparatus.
The JBC is led by Clare Gardiner, the head of cyber resilience and strategy at the National Cyber Security Centre, part of UK's spy agency GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters).
Gardiner took over from senior Home Office counter-terrorism official, Tom Hurd. The son of former Tory foreign secretary Douglas Hurd, he was initially charged with getting the JBC operational. According to the Guardian, Hurd—who has no scientific background—“is considered the frontrunner to take over after Sir Alex Younger retires from MI6” (the UK's foreign intelligence agency) once he completed his JBC remit.
The JBC is based “in the Cabinet Office, alongside the existing security coordination apparatus”, the Guardian reported. It comes under the NHS Test and Trace service, whose executive chair is Dido Harding, Tory peer and a former McKinsey consultant. Like Harding, the Test and Trace service has little to do with the NHS. It is largely provided by private corporations, with the involvement of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
No other information on the wider membership or staffing of the JBC is known. The Financial Times reported, “A small number of personnel from GCHQ’s headquarters in Cheltenham have already been seconded to help the centre develop its data analytics capabilities”, citing an anonymous Whitehall official.
The JBC sidelines the government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). It has also taken over responsibility from Public Health England (PHE) which, as part of a further reorganisation in August, now sits alongside the JBC under the umbrella of the National Institute for Health Protection (NIHP). The interim executive chair of NIHP is none other than Dido Harding.
Professor Allyson Pollock from Newcastle University, a member of the Independent SAGE group, said, “Even the term biosecurity is really worrying. We should be thinking about surveillance for epidemics and disease control.” Pollock noted that the number of public health labs had been cut from 50 to eight over the last 30 years.
Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at Edinburgh University tweeted, “UK Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) brings security approach to COVID. This virus isn’t going to change tactics, hack into secure systems or plot future attacks with underground cells. It’s a biological phenomenon that requires public health leadership. Secrecy only helps virus.”
The JBC is not the only area of state intelligence involved in the government response to COVID-19. It includes the Ministry of Defence Strategic Command, whose “innovation hub”, jHub, was brought in by government “to provide assistance, coordination and coherence of the COVID-19 symptom tracker apps”.
NHS England confirmed in July that the contract for US data-mining company, Palentir, to work on UK Covid data projects had been extended for four months. Run by pro-Trump oligarch Peter Thiel, it has extensive links to the Pentagon and US spy agencies.
Also in July, the government was forced to admit that the UK's Test and Trace contact-tracing programme had been operating unlawfully since it was established in May, as it had failed to complete a mandatory Date Protection Impact Assessment.
The admission was forced following a legal challenge by the Open Rights Group. The OCG said it had been “forced to threaten judicial review to ensure that people's privacy is protected.” In response, the government said it would reduce the period in which COVID-19 related date was retained from 20 years to eight years.
Under the draconian Coronavirus Act, introduced in March without a vote in Parliament as agreed by Labour, then under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the police are empowered to arrest and isolate anyone suspecting of being able to spread COVID-19. The powers of the police have now been strengthened by granting them even greater surveillance abilities, with police forces given access to the contact details of potentially millions of people who are self-isolating.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) website has been updated with guidance that people who fail to self-isolate “without reasonable justification” could have their name, address and contact details passed on to their local authority and then to the police. It adds, “A police force may request information relating to positive COVID-19 tests from the NHS Test & Trace programme directly.”
A positive test for COVID requires people in England to self-isolate for 10 days after displaying symptoms or face fines starting at £1,000. Penalties can rise £10,000 for repeat or serious breaches.
According to the Health Service Journal, the police were handed the powers after an “incredibly forceful” intervention by Health Secretary Matt Hancock. The BBC reports that following Hancock’s intervention, “a memorandum of understanding was issued between the DHSC and National Police Chiefs' Council to allow forces to access information that tells them if a ‘specific individual’ has been told to self-isolate…”
A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs' Council confirmed that the new snooping powers were in operation, saying they would “encourage voluntary compliance but will enforce the regulations and issue fixed penalty notices where appropriate and necessary”.
A British Medical Association spokesman responded that the test-and-trace system required "the full confidence of the public" to be effective. He said, "We are already concerned that some people are deterred from being tested because they are anxious about loss of income should they need to self-isolate—and we are worried should police involvement add to this.”
Protests are ongoing on the streets of Nigeria’s major cities and through the social media #EndSARS campaign, demanding an end to police brutality.
The protests began around two weeks ago calling for the immediate disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), the elite federal police unit that is routinely involved in extortion, kidnappings, grotesque abuses, and killings.
Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari was forced to announce the disbanding of the squad to be replaced by a new unit, the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team. He also pledged to set up panels to investigate and prosecute “unruly and unprofessional” police officers and promised wider police reforms.
Nigeria’s police inspector general announced on Sunday that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) would help train Nigeria’s new tactical police force. Senate President Ahmad Lawan called on protesters to call off their rallies in light of the steps Nigeria’s leaders had taken.
A man holds a banner as he demonstrate on the street to protest against police brutality in Lagos, Nigeria, Monday Oct. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)
Far from disbanding, protesters have broadened their demands, calling for an end to decades of corruption and mismanagement, with #EndBadGovernance shared by more than 1.8 million twitter users, and #BetterNigeria and #FixNigeriaNow being widely used. Supporters have launched an online radio station to bolster the movement. There have also been calls for Buhari to resign. The 77-year-old is a former general and was military head of state from 1983 to 1985 after taking power in a coup.
Last Wednesday, Nigeria’s army, notorious for its human rights abuses, declared it was ready to maintain law and order and deal decisively with any situation created by “subversive elements and troublemakers.”
This week, the army is to start a 10-week training exercise, “Operation Crocodile Smile,” the first time the annual exercise, typically concentrated in the oil-producing Delta region, will be nationwide. An army spokesperson made a pro forma denial that its timing had anything to do with the protests. But his statement said that this year the exercise would include a cyber warfare operation designed to identify, track and counter negative propaganda on social media. Justifying the widespread deployment of the armed forces, the statement claimed it was “aimed at identifying Boko Haram terrorists fleeing from the North East and other parts of the country as a result of the ongoing operations in the various theatres of operations, especially in the North East, North Central, and North Western parts of Nigeria.”
The protests have led to escalating violence by Nigeria’s security forces. The government crackdown has led to the deaths of more than a dozen people, with another two killed on Saturday when Adegboyega Oyetola, governor of Osun state, escaped what officials described as an “assassination attempt” by a group of people armed with guns and machetes. Yesterday, a 17-year-old girl, named only as Saifullah, died in police custody in northern Kano state, allegedly after torture. There was an increased military presence in Abuja, the capital, after Defence Minister Bashir Magashi warned protesters against “breaching national security.” According to Amnesty International, armed thugs attacked protesters at the headquarters of the central bank in Abuja.
Despite Nigeria being the world’s eighth largest oil producer and Africa's biggest oil producer, its oil wealth, upon which the country is reliant, is monopolised by the oil companies and Nigeria’s kleptocrats who are seeing their revenues plummeting amid falling demand and prices. For the decades since independence from Britain in 1960, politics has been a murderous battle by different factions of the national bourgeoisie about access to oil money.
While there are around 29,500 millionaires in Nigeria, with the country’s richest person, Aliko Dangote owning $10 billion, young Nigerians, who make up nearly half the population, confront a bleak economic future. The official rate of unemployment has surged to 27 percent, the highest in at least a decade. The latest report by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) noted that 40 percent of the total population, or almost 83 million people, live below the country’s poverty line of 137,430 naira ($381.75) a year—likely an underestimate.
The dire social conditions are the product of colonial and neocolonial oppression by the imperialist powers on behalf of their banks and corporations, exacerbated by the venal and corrupt rule of the national bourgeoisie. Incapable of advancing the social and economic conditions of the impoverished masses since independence, Nigeria’s ruling elite has proven the correctness of Trotsky’s warning in his theory of permanent revolution, which insisted that the bourgeoisie in countries with a belated capitalist development could not establish genuine independence from imperialism or carry out any of the democratic tasks associated with the bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century. Only the working class, organized internationally, cold do so as a by-product of a socialist revolution that would lay the basis for creating jobs, decent wages, and access to essential social services for all.
The protests have elicited widespread support around the world from sports figures, musicians, celebrities, and other prominent figures—with the hashtags #EndSars and #SarsMustEndNow trending in multiple countries. Nigerian diaspora communities have rallied in sympathy in Atlanta, Berlin, London, and New York.
Uche, a young British worker, told the WSWS, “I visited Nigeria a few years ago to bury my Dad and visit relatives. I knew about the corruption and to take small amounts of paper dollars to get an easy ride through customs because without a bribe you can and will be delayed for hours and hours.
“When me and my Mum had passed from customs filling in the paperwork, armed soldiers stopped us. They told my Mum to move away and they asked me why I had come to Nigeria, what I had in the box (suitcases). They wanted to see my passport visa and examine my suitcases. After money was passed to one of them, they welcomed us to Nigeria and told us to go on our way.
“My first sight of SARS was walking around a street full of market shops in an area of Lagos. Then heavily armed SARS police arrived, running out of their vehicles, screaming at stallholders. They stopped at one stall and this guy passed something to one of them and then they left him and went to other stalls. I knew that money was handed over before my cousin told me what was happening.
“I knew ahead of my visit about the corruption and SARS and they were dangerous.
“I did have first-hand contact with SARS. We were in a taxi going for a night out to a beach party on the island. The taxi was pulled over by SARS police. They ran out of their vehicle, pulled the taxi doors open, the taxi driver ran away. They were shining torches and pointing what looked like machine guns in our faces and screaming at us. They dragged us out of the taxi, threw us to the ground, prodding us, demanding to know who we were, where we were going, who we were meeting, who was the taxi driver, where we got our money from. All the time, pointing guns at our heads. My cousin did all the talking and once our money was handed over, they told us to go.
“My cousin said there was no one to complain to because complaints lead to arrest, or kidnap, or death. Unlike in the airport where the bribes were taken out of sight, the SARS didn’t care who saw what they were doing.
“I saw the SARS force was hated and people feared having any contact with them. I was angry at what I saw there: people struggling to live and being terrorized by riot police who were stealing what little money people had, and nothing in the country worked properly. When my Dad was alive, he used to tell me about Nigeria, and he said the Nigeria they got was not the Nigeria the people wanted after independence.
“I really support the protests in Nigeria, and I am glad that what is happening there is being written about on the pages of the WSWS, so everyone can know how the people have been treated. I am glad they are standing up for themselves. I hope the protests work to bring a better life for Nigerians.”
Last Friday, the IG Metall trade union and works council at Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe brought over 3,000 steelworkers to a rally at the North Rhine-Westphalian (NRW) state parliament in Düsseldorf. Held in the midst of a surge in the coronavirus pandemic, the action was aimed at persuading the state government to take a financial stake in the industrial group’s ailing steel sector and restructure it with billions of euros.
Whatever the union and its works council representatives claim, the action was not about jobs. Rather, IG Metall and the works council are continuing their policy of backing the slashing of jobs and wages in close cooperation with the owners and the government and suppressing any serious struggle against these attacks on the workers.
Industrial action that includes all steelworkers and other workers at home and abroad is the only way to defend jobs. But that is what the well-paid bureaucrats in the union halls and works council offices—as well as the government and the billionaire shareholders—fear above all. They fear it could escalate into a political conflagration.
IG Metall leaflet for the rally
Under the surface there is seething anger in factories, offices and workplaces. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are at stake, not only in the steel industry but also in the automotive and supplier industries, the chemical sector, aviation and the banking sector, not to mention the service and cultural sectors, where entire industries such as hospitality are on the brink of collapse. Millions of workers in public transport, health care, education and other socially critical sectors are being forced to risk their health and lives for miserable wages and without the necessary protection, while the political establishment moves ever more openly towards the murderous policy of herd immunity.
Under these circumstances, a determined struggle by steelworkers could quickly escalate into a general strike that calls into question the entire capitalist system, under conditions where shareholders, oligarchs and billionaires are stuffing their pockets in the midst of a pandemic. IG Metall’s call for the state to intervene serves to suppress such a mobilization.
In its call for the demonstration, the IG Metall begs the state government to cooperate with it in cutting jobs. It boasts that it has always supported job cuts in the past and will continue to do so in the future. The number of people directly employed in the steel industry has fallen from 288,000 to 84,000 in the last 40 years. Just 27,000 workers remain at Thyssenkrupp. The amount of crude steel produced has decreased only slightly in the same period, from 51,000 to 42,000 tons.
“Workers have made sacrifices for years,” says the IG Metall’s call for demonstrations. “We have done without. We have accepted that jobs have been cut. Three thousand more will disappear with the planned restructuring. This hurts, but we have been willing to go this way.”
Anyone who has witnessed the slow death of Opel Bochum knows what that means. At Opel, the IG Metall and the works council repeatedly “made sacrifices.” They sacrificed workers’ jobs—not their own—step by step and promised each time that the rest of the workers would be safe—until the plant finally closed completely.
They are now playing the same game at Thyssenkrupp, where profits in the steel sector have collapsed due to the pandemic. This has thwarted the cuts plans agreed with IG Metall.
According to a recent report by the RWI-Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, crude steel production in Germany will fall by almost 15 percent this year. Thyssenkrupp’s steel operations reported a loss of around €850 million in the first nine months, and for the year the loss is expected to add up to one billion euros. The company is not thinking of using the €17 billion it recently received for the sale of its profitable elevator division to preserve the steel business.
“The money is melting away like snow in the sun,” lamented works council chairman Tekin Nasikkol in Düsseldorf. He demanded, “Now it’s up to the state.”
IG Metall has been campaigning for state involvement for some time. But NRW state premier Armin Laschet and federal economics minister Peter Altmaier (both Christian Democratic Union—CDU), who visited Thyssenkrupp in Duisburg the week before last, have so far rejected this. Laschet reiterated his opposition on Friday at the rally, to which IG Metall had invited him.
However, he and Altmeier have hinted that the company could receive state aid for the conversion of steel production to the use of hydrogen and electricity from renewable energy to reduce CO2 emissions. Thyssenkrupp estimates investments of 10 billion euros are needed for this purpose.
State involvement is “nothing unusual at all in the steel industry,” according to IG Metall. Lower Saxony has a stake in Salzgitter AG, the Saarland has long held shares in Saarstahl, it points out. “If you look at the landscape of steel companies in Germany, participation by the state of NRW in Thyssenkrupp Steel is obvious,” said Jürgen Kerner, IG Metall treasurer and deputy chairman of the supervisory board at Thyssenkrupp AG.
The state could secure the future of all employees, ensure climate protection and maintain Germany as an industrial location, the union claims. On Friday, Kerner said that those who support Lufthansa and TUI with billions must also save the basis of German industry.
Concerning the bank bailout, Nasikkol added, “Are bankers worth more than steelworkers?”
All this is eyewash and exploits the worries and hardships of steelworkers to push through the interests of capital. In all of the “bailouts” and state interventions cited above, jobs and workers’ rights have never been the concern of the corporations, unions and governments.
Lufthansa is receiving €9 billion and is considering cutting about 30 percent of its current workforce, about 40,000 jobs. TUI is cutting at least 8,000 jobs. And the workforces of Salzgitter and Saarstahl have no more secure jobs than their colleagues at Thyssenkrupp, Arcelor Mittal, Tata or other steel producers. The bank bailout that Nasikkol invokes did not protect bank workers, who were laid off in droves, but the owners and big shareholders.
When the American state under President Barack Obama took a stake in the big auto companies following the financial crisis of 2008, this resulted in the biggest attacks on wages and jobs in the history of the US car industry. In cooperation with the United Auto Workers union, the White House Auto Task Force destroyed at least 36,000 jobs, cut the wages of newly hired workers in half, and abolished the eight-hour day, as well as the company’s health care scheme for pensioners.
In recent years, the union and works council at Thyssenkrupp have repeatedly ordered job cuts, wage cuts and speed-up to “keep the shop running.” In its report of the rally, the IG Metall union writes that the union “took part in restructuring, made sacrifices and always worked hard.”
In March of this year, the works council and IG Metall agreed to the “Collective Agreement on the Future Steel Pact 20-30,” which provides for the elimination of 3,000 jobs and withholds wage increases from all 27,000 employees. This agreement is now just so much wastepaper.
In May, all 10 representatives of the union and the works council who sit on the group supervisory board agreed to the break-up of the corporation. Many divisions, including the steel division, are to be spun off and several plants closed.
Already two years ago Thyssenkrupp decided to merge its steel division with its competitor Tata Steel—a move that was blocked by the EU Commission. After initial protests, IG Metall and the works council agreed to the deal because Tata allegedly promised to cut “only” 1,000 jobs when the merger was consummated. Now, an international steel group has again expressed interest in Thyssenkrupp. During the preparations for the IG Metall rally, news broke that the British steel group Liberty Steel had submitted a bid for the entire steel division.
The group, belonging to British billionaire Sanjeev Gupta, entered steel production only seven years ago, when it bought steel plants from Tata Steel in Britain. It then took over several plants from Arcelor Mittal in 2017. By its own account, Liberty Steel now has more than 30,000 employees in Europe, the US, Australia and China. In Europe, Liberty Steel employs 14,000 people in the UK, the Czech Republic, Romania, Northern Macedonia, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy.
From next year, manager Premal Desai will join the board of the Gupta Family Group (GFG), to which Liberty Steel belongs. Desai was head of the steel business of Thyssenkrupp in Duisburg from June 2019 to February 2020. Thyssenkrupp, in turn, wants to take a “careful look” at Liberty Steel’s bid, the company announced. At the same time, the company is continuing to talk to other potential partners.
Although Kerner, Nasikkol and other IG Metall representatives have rejected a takeover by Liberty Steel, they had done the same in the merger with Tata, only to agree to the fusion in the end. As long as their own posts and privileges remain secure, they are prepared to do anything.
Defending jobs requires a break with IG Metall and its works council representatives. Steelworkers must unite in independent action committees that organize the defence of jobs and contact workers in other plants, industries and countries. This struggle requires a socialist programme. The assets of the banks, hedge funds and the super-rich must be expropriated. Economic life must be democratically controlled and geared to the needs of society rather than the profits of the rich.
With coronavirus cases rising rapidly across Spain, it is devastating the lives and livelihoods of workers. Last Wednesday, Spain passed the threshold of 900,000 cases, having recorded half a million infections in less than two months. This puts Spain at seventh in the world by total number of cases. As Spain officially records 12–15,000 new positive tests a day, it will reach the grim milestone of one million total infections within days.
The official death toll stands at well over 30,000, while new figures from the National Institute of Statistics (INE) indicate that just under 59,000 excess deaths have occurred since the pandemic began. Around 11,000 have died since July alone according to INE, more than double the Health Ministry’s official figures, which recorded 5,400 fatalities. Daily deaths range between around 100 and 250.
People walk along a boulevard in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
The Madrid region, hit hardest by the resurgence of the virus, is hiding the true extent of the resurgence, tampering with its daily figures to downplay the threat to life. Over the last months, it has omitted thousands of cases from its daily tallies, before retroactively modifying the infection figures as much as a fortnight later, without notifying the public.
On 2 October, for example, Madrid published figures indicating that 1,005 new coronavirus cases had been detected in the region the previous day; a week later, going back to the official statistics, this figure had been changed to 2,422—more than double the initial announcement. An even larger discrepancy can be seen in the infection statistics reported on 24 September, when 828 positive cases were originally announced. But by 13 October, that day’s figures were nearly five times as high, at 4,324.
Even as COVID-19 rips across Spain and the world, the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is refusing to take any serious measures to contain it. Schools, universities and non-essential workplaces remain open, providing perfect breeding grounds for the coronavirus.
On Friday, limited measures came into effect in Catalonia, in response to a sharp uptick in infections, with cases rising by 40 percent in just one week. The restrictions, set to last a fortnight, close all bars and restaurants, although they can still provide takeaway service. Shops are limited to 30 percent of their usual capacity, cinemas and theatres to 50 percent.
Arcades, amusement parks, bingo halls and casinos will also have to close, while parks and children’s play areas must shut at 8pm. While theory-based university lessons will move online, workshops, practicals and research activities will still meet on campus.
There are no changes to in-person education for children under age 18: schools, colleges and nurseries remain open—guaranteeing the continued spread of the disease. Education centres are hotspots for the virus: 1,664 schools across Catalonia have completely or partially quarantined classes after detecting coronavirus outbreaks. These measures affect nearly 40,000 pupils in the region, over 1,800 teachers and around 300 other education workers.
The pandemic continues to disproportionately affect the working class and poor, belying the tired bourgeois slogan that “we’re all in this together.” Even as virus cases rocket upwards, there is no talk in the ruling class of allowing workers in non-essential industries to shelter at home to protect themselves from the potentially deadly disease. Workers are still expected to show up at factories, offices and other workplaces in Catalonia, with “work-related activities” one of the many exceptions to the region’s “rule-of-six” group size limit.
In Madrid, hospitalisation figures demonstrate the pandemic’s horrific impact on the poorest and more vulnerable, particularly immigrant workers, who often live in crowded flats and face unsafe workplaces. In Madrid’s University Hospital 12 de Octubre, 90 percent of patients hospitalised with coronavirus in September came from poor backgrounds. Most virus-related hospital admissions across the city were of workers from immigrant backgrounds aged 30 to 60.
A nurse from the capital’s La Paz University Hospital described the situation facing migrant workers: “These migrants are mostly poor and have a worse immune response … Living in badly ventilated apartments probably means that they are getting infected with a greater viral load, as well as having a worse diet and immune response. They are the ones who suffer most during this pandemic, alongside the elderly.”
In a testament to the irrationality of capitalism, despite a vast resurgence of the pandemic in Spain, around 2,000 jobs in health and social care were lost in September, according to public sector union Central Sindical Independiente y de Funcionarios (CSIF). Though the PSOE-Podemos government promised 50,000 new healthcare professionals would be hired to combat the pandemic, the Nursing Union (SATSE) estimates that Spain’s primary care centres still lack around 15,500 nurses.
Spanish hospitals are already struggling to cope with the surge in coronavirus admissions, which will only mount as the winter flu season nears. Warnings are already been made that hospitals will be overwhelmed this winter, as the second wave of COVID-19 coincides with a surge in flu patients.
Currently, one in five (18.8 percent) Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds in Spain are occupied by coronavirus patients, according to Health Ministry figures. This rises to over a third of beds in the worst-affected regions of Madrid (37.43 percent), Aragón (34.20 percent) and La Rioja (33.33 percent). Provincial government data often paint an even starker picture: in Aragón, for example, over half (51.16 percent) of ICU beds were occupied by coronavirus patients.
COVID-19’s impact on the working class is not just medical, but also economic and social. A recent Oxfam report indicates that the pandemic will push a further 1.1 million Spaniards into poverty without greater action to protect education, health and social security. This would bring the number of workers in Spain in poverty to 10.9 million, up from a fifth (20.7 percent) of the population before the pandemic to almost a quarter (23.07 percent).
International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections indicate that Spain’s economy is on the verge of collapse, having seen the largest drop in GDP this year of all advanced economies. Spain’s deficit will rise to 14.1 percent of GDP this year and its national debt to 123 percent, remaining at around 120 percent of GDP until 2025. Spain’s economy will not recover to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2023, the IMF predicts, after contracting 12.8 percent in 2020, the biggest decrease in Spain’s history and the largest in the euro zone.
The IMF also predicted that Spain’s unemployment figures will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2026. Unemployment in Spain will remain at 16.8 percent this year and the next, the IMF predicts, making it the second-worst country in Europe after Greece (19.9 percent). Around 965,000 jobs were destroyed in Spain this year due to COVID-19; the IMF forecast that only one in five, or 187,000 jobs in total, will be recovered next year.
Between November 1 and the end of 2020, hundreds of thousands of Spanish workers will likely be made unemployed, as a clause in Spain’s ERTE furlough scheme requiring employers to keep workers on payroll comes to an end. The General Council of Administrative Agents of Spain expects 200,000-300,000 job losses—in addition to the loss of around 150,000 self-employed workers’ jobs—with shop, hospitality and restaurant workers worst affected.
Thousands of job cuts have already been announced across Spain, particularly in aviation and manufacturing. Aerospace company Airbus plans to lay off 889 workers in Spain, while ITP Aero will make 600 unemployed and Aernnova will fire 950 workers, including 650 in Spain. Indra, a firm specialising in aviation, information technologies and defence systems has initiated proceedings to lay off 6,000 workers.
US insurance companies saw their profit margins soar during the first half of this year while millions of American families are being sent into bankruptcy under the weight of massive medical debts during the coronavirus pandemic.
A Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) report released last week revealed that the top insurance companies have amassed a substantial growth in wealth due to a sharp increase in marginal gains and lower administrative costs. Despite the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc across health care systems and hospitals nationwide, insurers such as UnitedHealthcare, CVSHealth (Aetna), and Cigna have raised their profitability to new heights.
Aetna logo (Credit: Flickr.com/Wonderlane)
One of the main drivers of the profit bonanza has been the sharp fall in medical claims for major operations and hospital procedures, including elective surgeries and other advanced treatments. The KFF analysis found that gross margins for the most prominent companies increased since the start of the pandemic relative to the first half of 2019.
The underlying cause for the marked drop in health insurance claims was driven by hospitals and health care facilities focusing attention on treating patients infected with COVID-19. The rampage of the virus across the country beginning in late March led to a sweeping suspension of routine and non-emergency medical care and a growing disinclination of the population toward seeking treatment for other health-related issues out of fear of catching the contagion.
In the analysis conducted by KFF researchers, insurance companies with group market plans saw their gross margins increase by 22 percent through the second quarter of 2020, while gross margins for Medicare Advantage plans increased 41 percent through the first six months of 2020 compared to the same time last year. Before the pandemic, such upticks in group plans and Medicare markets had only occurred gradually over years.
Moreover, insurers have seen a decline in their medical loss ratios, meaning that more income is remaining after paying out medical costs which can then be reallocated for administrative costs or pocketed as profits. Loss ratios in the Medicare Advantage market declined by 5 percentage points this year and market loss ratios decreased approximately 3 percentage points.
Although the KFF study acknowledges that estimates on the actual profits of insurance companies cannot be made directly, the analysis indicates that health insurance companies have profited handsomely amidst mass death and suffering in the wider population. Health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group saw its net income during the second quarter grow from $3.4 billion in 2019 to $6.7 billion in 2020 and Anthem Inc.’s net income increased from $1.1 billion to $2.3 billion.
Insurers have utilized their influx of cash and increased revenue streams to enhance the wealth of major investors and shareholders. Like most corporations and banks that have seen their wealth skyrocket due to the stimulus funds packaged under the so-called CARES Act, health insurance giants have used their increased capital reserves for share buybacks. Insurance conglomerate Aflac recently authorized an increase in its share repurchasing program in a bid to return more value to shareholders. The company plans on buying up to an additional 100 million shares in the coming months.
The lucrative gains being reported by health insurance companies are happening in the midst of the worst collapse of the US health care system in history. While the Trump administration and the Democratic Party have continued their haggling charade over the distribution of even meager federal assistance to unemployed workers, discussion over the health care crisis facing millions has received little to no attention.
President Trump announced last month the adoption of a “terrific” new health care plan that will serve as the replacement of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). The details of such a plan have yet to be produced, while Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has suggested that a Biden presidency would “build” on what little is left of the ACA.
Meanwhile, the situation facing the working class and poor is becoming increasingly dire. Medical debt in the United States is piling up to untold heights as tens of millions of unemployed Americans are finding it extraordinarily difficult to pay for medical care. In August, consumer finance company Credit Karma found that nearly 20 million Americans have a total of $45 billion in medical debt. This averages out to about $2,200 of debt per person.
Medical debt rose 7 percent from the end of last year before the pandemic, and then another 3 percent after the pandemic erupted. These percentages are understatements, however, since there is a 180-day lag before unpaid medical debts will show up on consumers’ credit reports, according to Credit Karma. Colleen McCreary, chief people officer at Credit Karma, told USA Today, “This is a lot of money when you consider nearly half of Americans don’t have $400 saved in case of an emergency.”
Experts are predicting a substantial rise in medical debt in the coming months, especially due to a rise in permanent layoffs and unprecedented numbers of weekly unemployment claims. In September, an estimated 26 million people received unemployment insurance and real unemployment now stands at just around 26 percent.
Many workers are finding unforeseen medical expenses as a tremendous burden on their financial stability that is also fueling the debt crisis. A survey from debt.com conducted between June 17 to July 6 showed that 56 percent of US adults had medical debt sent to collections and nearly two-thirds owe under $5,000, while 5 percent owe more than $50,000. The study found that hospitalizations accounted for a quarter of the debt, followed by X-rays, MRIs and lab fees (22 percent), emergency room visits (19 percent) and doctor visits (15 percent).
The historic rise in unemployment combined with the ending of the $600 federal unemployment supplement approved through the CARES Act have forced millions of working-class and middle-class people to drain their savings to pay their bills. A joint study involving West Health group and Gallup found that half of all US adults are concerned that a major health event in their household could lead to bankruptcy, compared to 45 percent a year ago. More than a quarter of respondents indicated they would need to borrow money if they received a medical bill of more than $500.
Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has sent a letter to UK university vice-chancellors calling it “frankly disturbing” that most universities have not adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of anti-Semitism.
He warned that if he did not see “the overwhelming majority of institutions adopting the definition by Christmas” then he would ask the Office for Students (OfS) to take regulatory action, possibly including suspending “funding streams”.
Williamson’s letter is preparing for the censorship of hundreds of thousands of students and higher education staff. It is the latest move in a five-year conspiracy of the Conservative government, the Labour Party and Zionist organisations aimed at criminalising vast swathes of the political left.
The IHRA definition is a mechanism for outlawing political criticism of the Israeli state, its criminal oppression of the Palestinians and the right-wing religious nationalism on which it is founded. Under its examples of “anti-Semitic” behaviour are listed opinions “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour”, “Applying double standards by requiring of it behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
In 2017, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) prompted a letter of protest from 250 academics when it tried to disrupt Israeli Apartheid Week events on campus, urging its supporters to “record, film, photograph and get witness evidence,” telling them it would “help you to take it up with the university, students’ union or even the police.” The CAA cited the IHRA definition as the basis for prosecutions.
In 2019, Labour-controlled London council Tower Hamlets cancelled a Palestinian charity event, previously attended by hundreds of people, because it was deemed to conflict with the principles of the IHRA. Now the Tory government intends to roll out the same censorship and repression across all UK universities.
That such a reactionary campaign has reached this stage is devastating proof of the blows dealt to the working class and youth due to the lack of principle and political cowardice displayed by Jeremy Corbyn during his five year leadership of the Labour Party. The IHRA definition came to prominence in the UK in the context of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt carried out by the Blairite majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party with the sponsorship of the Israeli state and Tory MPs.
Jeremy Corbyn speaking in Parliament (credit: UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor-FlickR
The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) immediately raised the alarm over the significance of this right-wing campaign, writing in 2016:
“A political amalgam has been established that equates any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, with the aim of charging the entire ‘left’ with this crime—on the basis that all Jews identify with the state of Israel. Any criticism of the historical actions of the Zionist movement, and, above all, any equation of Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians with that suffered by Jews under fascism, is outlawed.”
In subsequent articles, the WSWS warned that the “strident accusations of anti-Semitism are aimed at shifting the domestic and foreign policy not just of Labour, but of the entire British political establishment sharply to the right.” A definition of “anti-Semitism that includes criticism of Israel provides a legal mechanism for censoring, silencing and criminalising left-wing views and organisations, while whipping up and legitimising anti-Muslim sentiment.”
The WSWS explained that this right-wing offensive had no historical legitimacy or popular support. It was the spearhead for a state-orchestrated conspiracy, led by the Blairites “acting with the Conservative Party, the media, the military and intelligence establishment and the Israel lobby”.
Leading organisations in the witch-hunt, and proponents of the IHRA, include the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, staffed by party right-wingers; Labour Friends of Israel, involved in framing fellow Labour members for alleged anti-Semitism; the Community and Security Trust, funded by the Conservative government to the tune of £65.2 million since 2015; the British Israel Communications and Research Centre, an Israeli advocacy group; and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a right-wing, conservative organisation.
The Israeli and American states were deeply involved. A staffer at the Israeli embassy in the UK, Shai Masot, was shown by Al Jazeera to be involved in plans to “take down” UK MPs perceived as hostile to Israel. Al Jazeera ’s reporting also revealed that the Israeli embassy helped to establish, and in some cases directly funded, several “independent” organisations, including the Union of Jewish Students. In June 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a conference of American Jewish organisations that the American state would organise “push back” against a prospective Corbyn government.
If Russia or China had interfered in British politics to a fraction of the level of the US and Israel, the howls from parliament and the media would be deafening!
By winning a victory over Corbyn, these forces planned to lay the foundations for a broader assault on left-wing workers and youth. By his refusal to oppose the Blairites, his constant political retreats on fundamental questions including NATO membership, the Trident nuclear missile system and war with Syria, and insistence that party unity must be maintained at all costs, Corbyn handed them this victory on a plate. Not only did he suppress all opposition to the right-wing in the party and the working class more broadly, but he became a co-conspirator in the witch-hunt of his own supporters, including long-time allies.
Prominent Labour “left” and former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone was hounded out of the party on bogus charges of anti-Semitism in 2018, taking Corbyn’s advice to retire quietly. The claiming of “such a high-profile scalp,” the WSWS warned, “will be felt internationally. The witch hunt and expulsions within Labour will be held up by right-wing forces all over the world—above all in Israel and the United States—as proof of the left’s supposed rampant anti-Semitism and used as a justification for systematic political censorship and persecution.”
Other Corbyn supporters followed, including Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, and many, many more lesser known Labour members.
Under Corbyn, the Labour Party then adopted the IHRA definition in full in 2018 and acquiesced to a politically motivated investigation into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in 2019.
That year, Corbyn and his team actively participated in the expulsion of another prominent ally, Labour MP Chris Williamson, whose treatment made clear the intentions the witch-hunters had for the universities. Based on false anti-Semitism charges, Labour and Zionist student societies worked to ban Williamson from speaking on their campuses. In 2018, the WSWS wrote that Corbyn was “facilitate[ing] the efforts of the UK’s political establishment, together with the state of Israel and the United States, to proscribe left-wing opposition to Zionism as ‘extremism’ to justify its political suppression.”
Chris Williamson
Corbyn’s betrayals ended in Labour’s decisive defeat in the December 2019 general election and the coming to power of Boris Johnson. In April he tamely handed the party back to the Blairites, led by Sir Keir Starmer.
One of Starmer’s first actions was to step up the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the Labour Party. Starmer dismissed Cornyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey as Shadow Education Secretary for retweeting comments by actress Maxine Peake that were critical of Israel—pointing out that Israeli security forces trained US police in the restraint techniques that led to the May 25 death of George Floyd. Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a shadow environment minister, resigned after the Jewish Labour Movement demanded his resignation for an old Facebook message describing Zionism as a “dangerous nationalist idea.”
Long-Bailey had herself put the finishing touches to Corbyn’s legacy during her failed campaign in the Labour leadership election, signing up to a list of 10 pledges mandated by the Board of Deputies of British Jews guaranteeing her obedience on the question of Israel and denouncing her former colleagues’ record on anti-Semitism. She became a victim of her own rotten politics.
On Wednesday, July 22, Labour then apologised in the High Court to seven former staffers from Labour’s governance and legal unit, involved in investigating accusations of anti-Semitism. The seven became whistleblowers in a July 2019 BBC Panorama documentary, Is Labour Anti-Semitic? A letter of apology was sent to BBC journalist and Panorama presenter John Ware. Undisclosed financial compensation was made to the whistleblowers and to Ware, reported to be worth around £500,000.
Corbyn and the former party leadership had rejected the accusations made in the Panorama programme that they had shown a “lack of commitment” to investigating charges of anti-Semitism levelled against Labour members and called them “disaffected former officials,” who had “worked actively to undermine” Corbyn and had “both personal and political axes to grind.” A report was commissioned by Labour’s former General Secretary Jennie Formby to be submitted as evidence to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) into its handling of anti-Semitism allegations under Corbyn. which was blocked by the party’s lawyers, detailing what it described as a “hyper factional atmosphere” of hostility towards Corbyn in Labour’s head office.
A fresh round of legal action against the Corbynites was swiftly announced, amid demands for Corbyn’s expulsion from the party and threats to take out cases “against those who repeat the libels… in future.”
Only through this long and tortured birth of the myth of “institutional” left-wing anti-Semitism, with Corbyn acting as midwife, have Williamson and the Tory government been able to deliver their ultimatum to the universities.
Williamson’s letter to vice-chancellors followed a freedom of information request logged by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) which found that just 29 of 133 universities have adopted the IHRA definition, and that 80 had no plans to do so—including Oxford and Cambridge. The UJS and Tory government have been pushing for its unanimous acceptance since May 2019, when communities minister Robert Jenrick demanded universities “show moral leadership and adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.”
In January 2020, Jenrick upped the ante and declared, “I have been clear that all universities and local councils that have not already done so must adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. It is shocking that some still haven’t, demonstrating a serious lack of respect for this issue.” He warned, “Organisations like these should not expect to receive public money if they cannot demonstrate that they are fighting antisemitism.”
Responding to the recent UJS freedom of information request, Jenrick said he was “extremely disappointed” and that it was “simply unacceptable that universities accept public money but refuse to take this step.” The UJS, in its statement, accused universities of “defying” their own lobbying efforts and the interventions of the government.
Labour’s support is assured. In her response to the UJS, Labour’s new Shadow Education Secretary Kate Green, appointed after the removal of Long-Bailey, said that while it was “welcome that a number of universities have adopted the IHRA definition or are considering it… many more are yet to act, and must do so.
“Freedom of speech and thought are important but can never be an excuse for antisemitism. Labour urges those universities which are yet to adopt the definition to do so as soon as possible.”
The full extent of the line-up between the two main parties on campus censorship was revealed this August when former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth provided the foreword to a report from the Policy Exchange, the house think-tank of the Conservative Party. Smeeth was a key player in the anti-Semitism witch-hunt against the Corbynite “left.” Between 2005 and 2007, she served as director of public affairs and campaigns for the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), a pro-Israel lobby group. She was exposed by WikiLeaks in July 2016 as a “strictly protect” US asset in leaked diplomatic cables.
“Academic freedom in the UK: Protecting viewpoint diversity” alleges a “structural discriminatory effect” against academics who “identify as on the right” and called for the Office for Students (OfS) to use its powers to fine higher education providers and student groups who infringed on their “academic free speech.” It was authored by individuals connected with the far-right libertarian milieu around web publication Spiked and the social Darwinist network in academia, which are both closely linked with the Tory party.
Julian Assange
Theresa May’s Tory government founded the OfS in January 2018 amid claims in the right-wing media that universities had become bastions of left-wing intolerance and censorship. The right utilised the policy of “no platforming” of figures such as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and feminists such as Germaine Greer by various purveyors of reactionary petty bourgeois identity politics to portray opposition to their own views among students, which has seen popular protests against the presence on campus of prominent fascists such as Nick Griffin and Marine Le Pen, and the employing of eugenicist Noah Carl by Cambridge University, as part of a spectrum of intolerance by the “left” towards academic freedoms.
Originally under the leadership of arch-reactionary Toby Young, the OfS was given a mandate supposedly to restore free speech on campus. The only “freedom” being defended was that of far-right figures to agitate and produce pseudo-science uncontested, with student protests repressed and uncooperative institutions fined. This agenda was escalated in July and August this year, when Williamson announced that financial support for struggling universities would be dependent on their “fully complying with their legal duties to secure freedom of speech.”
Smeeth wrote the foreword to Policy Exchange’s manifesto for state intervention against left-wing students in her capacity as CEO of the Index on Censorship, chaired by another former Labour MP, Trevor Phillips, who heads the Policy Exchange’s “History Matters” project. As the WSWS commented at the time, “the forces marshalled behind the Index on Censorship intend to use government intervention on the campuses to suppress criticism of Israel and its criminal abuse of the Palestinians—a touchstone issue for British imperialism.”
This state-orchestrated conspiracy has already seen pro-Palestinian students barred from a university campus. Williamson’s letter to vice-chancellors is a warning that the whole of the student and academic body will now be subjected to the same threats. Faced with a rising trend of international class struggle before the pandemic, which can only be intensified by its devastating impact, the ruling class are preparing a campaign of slander and outright censorship to demonise and outlaw left-wing thought.
The report "Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the sectarian far left" by British academics Daniel Allington, Siobhan McAndrew and David Hirsh
In September 2019, the UK revised its counter extremism strategy to include a focus on “Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the sectarian far left”. The authors of this report, British academics Daniel Allington, Siobhan McAndrew, and David Hirsh, were deeply involved in advancing allegations of widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
According to them, the “sectarian far left”—defined, in their terms, by its vanguardism, anti-imperialism, anti-fascism, and “revolutionary workerist ideology”—is inherently “extremist” and “violent”. Examples of “revolutionary workerist” statements included the views that “The greatest threat to democracy has always come from the far right” and “We should always support striking workers.”
These arguments provided the justification for last month’s directive from the Department for Education that banned schools from using anti-capitalist material. Anti-capitalism is defined as an “extreme political stance”, equivalent to anti-Semitism and terrorism.
The Bolivian regime installed by the US-backed military overthrow of president Evo Morales last November has recognized the victory of Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) in the presidential elections held Sunday.
While the official results have not been issued, exit polls showed an overwhelming first-round victory for Luis Arce, the MAS presidential candidate who was Morales’s economy minister. The MAS candidate was credited with 52.4 percent of the vote against 31.5 percent for the right-wing ex-president Carlos Mesa. The far-right politician Luis Fernando Camacho, who directed fascist paramilitary groups during and since the coup last year, received 14 percent of the vote.
Evo Morales (Credit: www.kremlin.ru)
Mesa has already conceded defeat, while the de facto president Jeanine Áñez and the president of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, have congratulated Arce for the victory. The OAS played a crucial role in the overthrow of Morales last year by publishing a report with false allegations of voter fraud.
Despite the coronavirus pandemic and heavy military presence at the polls, local media reported a high turnout as millions took to the polls with masks and waited long hours in socially distanced lines.
This electoral outcome demonstrates the deep popular hatred for the fascistic Áñez regime, which twice postponed the elections, amid a catastrophic response to the pandemic, military repression and rampant corruption. With nearly 8,500 confirmed COVID-19 deaths, Bolivia has the highest per capita fatalities after Perú and Belgium.
The decision to accept the election results, handing power back to MAS, is being taken by US imperialism and its stooges in the Áñez regime and Bolivian military as a necessary tactical maneuver to politically disarm and paralyze the growing workers’ struggles, even as they prepare a shift to authoritarian forms of rule.
At the same time, an Arce administration is perceived as a better vehicle to re-start the economy, implement a “herd immunity” policy of generalized contagion, ram through brutal austerity measures in response to the economic downturn and further build up the repressive state apparatus.
Preparations were in place to overturn the election of MAS. Less than a year after the military overthrew of Morales, hundreds of troops, some in riot gear and others wielding rifles, patrolled the streets of La Paz, Santa Cruz and other cities to oversee the elections. In at least one instance, the army was caught clandestinely transporting bags with ballots in Santa Cruz.
Salvador Romero, appointed by the coup regime to oversee the electoral court, is a former electoral chief named by Mesa himself. He became an informant for the US ambassador, Philip Goldberg, as the latter plotted a civil war along with the Santa Cruz elites in 2008, and became resident director for the National Democracy Institute (a US State Department front) in Honduras in 2011-2014 with the mission of “building trust in the elections” overseen by the regime installed in the 2009 US-backed coup.
Romero announced at the last minute that, supposedly due to system issues, preliminary results would not be published the night of the elections, which would have facilitated a fraud.
None of this impeded ex-president Morales, who was arbitrarily banned from running as a candidate, and other MAS leaders from presenting the elections as a “celebration of democracy.”
At a press conference held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Evo Morales added: “Today, we have recovered democracy and the fatherland. We will recover stability and progress! We will recover peace!”
Meanwhile, in La Paz, as the police beefed up the cordon to protect the MAS campaign headquarters, president-elect Arce read a statement to the media indicating: “We will govern for all Bolivians, we’ll build a national unity government, we’ll build unity in our country.”
These statements amount to an olive branch to the coup plotters, who will simply bide their time until MAS is again deemed inadequate to suppress social opposition.
Most fundamentally, MAS’s entire response to the coup has been directed at preventing the independent mobilization of the working class against the capitalist state. This was accompanied by promises to the ruling class of an “economic reactivation” and benefits to the same military responsible for massacring those resisting the overthrow of Morales.
On Saturday, Morales tweeted: “The soldiers and Joint Task Force personnel did not receive bonuses or salaries in the last three months, a situation that we denounce as a flagrant violation of their rights and a dismissal of the work they perform.”
This followed an interview with Jacobin where he introduced himself as “the only civilian president who has been in the barracks,” indicating that he was conscripted in 1978, specialized in the Military Police and provided security for the Chiefs of Staff. He then argued that MAS can provide stability to bourgeois rule as opposed to the decades of “one coup after the other” before his election in 2005.
He fraudulently presented as “anti-capitalist” his opposition to the coronavirus shutdowns, a position based on protecting the continued stream of profits at the expense of workers’ lives. “The productive apparatus was paralyzed by the quarantine, but also the government itself shut it down because it submitted to the policies of capitalism,” he said.
MAS and Morales are preparing another betrayal of the Bolivian workers and masses amid the ongoing deadly threats of the pandemic, military dictatorship and fascism. This can only be understood as the outcome of their bourgeois-nationalist politics, which are completely subordinated to Wall Street and imperialism.
Evo Morales first came to power in order to quell the crisis of bourgeois rule in 2000 and 2005, when mass protests erupted against water privatization and over demands for the nationalization of natural gas.
A rise in commodity prices and growing Chinese demand allowed Morales to offer major proceeds to transnational firms as “partners”, while assigning majority ownership and more income for the state. Economic growth and a balancing act between Chinese, European and US capital greatly enriched sections of the local business elite, the real social base of MAS.
New social programs and investments in public service helped millions rise out of poverty, but most remained near the threshold of the official poverty line. Bolivia remains the poorest country in South America, with the UN finding that 63 percent live below or near poverty, the same percentage living under poverty in 2004.
Once commodity prices fell in 2014, the Morales administration bowed to pressures by transnational corporations and finance capital, granting permits for expanding mining and agricultural exploitation into previously protected lands, implementing social cuts and raising foreign debt to record levels.
Consequently, the drop in poverty effectively stopped in 2015, and extreme poverty began to rebound in 2018. This led to a resurgence of the class struggle and growing popular opposition to the Morales government.
In February 2016, Morales lost a constitutional referendum to seek reelection, a result he disregarded, which in turn fed social anger.
In the weeks before the 2019 elections, there was a national strike of health care workers and a 20-day strike at the largest mine in the country in San Cristobal. This happened against the backdrop of the social explosions against inequality in Chile and Ecuador.
The coup was mounted in response to fears within Bolivia’ ruling circles that Morales was becoming incapable of suppressing the class struggle. It also was in line with the drive by US imperialism to regain its hegemony over the natural resources and markets of Bolivia—including strategic lithium reserves—and all of Latin America against Chinese and European competitors.
The coup and the subsequent repression, however, did not intimidate the mass resistance of Bolivian workers and peasants, whose anger has only grown in the face of repression and the disastrous response to the pandemic.
