Tribal health in India: An eternity of backwardness?

Anamika Roy, Chandrima Chatterjee & Parul Malik

The tribal population of India comprises of the indigenous people dwelling in the hinterlands who are sometimes extremely susceptible to high levels of inaccessibility to health resources. The health inequalities which have been faced by these people are an evidence of the fundamental failure of the realization of their human rights in terms of social, economic, and political capabilities. Numerous examples testify this reality- like the incident in Kalahandi in Odisha, where a man had to carry his deceased wife on a cycle for 50 kms to get proper cremation or the very famous Dashrath Majhi who had constructed a road out of a mountain in memory of his wife, who died in labor, unable to reach the hospital. Such incidents bring to light the basic loopholes present the construct of the society which are responsible for giving rise to these problems.

India is a diverse country and the tribal population is culturally different too. Over 84 million people belonging to 698 communities have been identified as members of the scheduled tribes (STs) and constitute approximately 8.2% of the Indian population. Clear governmental policies targeted towards scheduled tribes exist for affirmative actions as STs have been considered as a distinct and discriminated community by the Indian Constitution, dating back to 1950.

In the era of globalization, India’s population including those belonging to scheduled tribes is undergoing socio-economic and health transformation.  Health disparities tend to manifest when a contrast is drawn between indigenous and non-indigenous people. The health indicators for the tribal people remain very poor. According the National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS-4) (2015-16), the under-five mortality among the indigenous population was 57.2 per 1000 live births whereas for the non-indigenous population it was reported to be 38.5 per 1000 live births. Similarly, a higher rate of infant mortality (IMR) was reported, 44.4 per 1000 live births.  If we investigate further, the habits of consumption of alcohol or tobacco chewing, they are higher in the indigenous people, possibly due to lack of awareness about the negative health outcomes of these and because of other social factors. One major possibility that makes the health of indigenous population to be subjected to vulnerability is the existing limited health research on specific indigenous groups.

Poverty and child malnutrition are also significantly higher in the tribal population. The prevailing situation is in large part since ST population has for centuries suffered from neglect from policy point of view. Even today, areas where tribal live, the health services remain grossly underdeveloped and population access to good quality health services is at best abysmal.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, a report dating as late as end of August, showed that  some isolated tribes in Chattisgarh had never heard about the disease. Remotest areas in Odisha and Great Nicobar, also reported cases infected with the coronavirus. An ongoing assessment of tribal areas about the impact of lockdown also described the various health challenges the tribes were subjected to- absence of healthcare facilities, compromised health conditions and low immunity, barriers to testing and monitoring of the disease, to list a few.

One of the main reasons for the poorly planned and poorly administered tribal health service found by the GOI Tribal Special Committee on Tribal Issues was the “nearly complete lack of involvement by members of the Scheduled Tribes or their representatives in policy-making, planning or delivery of health services.” These disparities call for an understanding of the existing systems and focused attempts to bridge the gap. Many of the infectious and parasitic diseases, which are quite prevalent among this population, are preventable with timely intervention, health awareness, and information, education and communication (IEC) activities.

A majority of the health care needs of the tribal population are taken care of either by the trained health personnel at the primary health care level or by their own traditional indigenous health practitioners at village level. Their health system and medical knowledge over ages known as ‘Traditional Health Care System’ depends on both- the herbal and the psychosomatic lines of treatment. With plants, flowers, seeds, animals and other naturally available substances forming the major basis of treatment, this practice has always had a touch of mysticism, supernatural and magic, for many. The primary health care infrastructure provides the first level of contact between the population and health care providers. It provides integrated promotive, preventive, curative and rehabilitative services to the population close to their homes. Those requiring specialized care are referred to secondary and tertiary sector.

The compromised state of tribal health can possibly be improved by taking certain steps into consideration – financial incentives for the doctors posted in the tribal areas, mandatory tribal service with fair posting and transfer policies, special separate cadre for tribal areas, task shifting by empowering the nurses, ANMs, male multipurpose workers pharmacists capable of providing basic primary health care at the PHCs. A proper Health Technology Assessment (HTA), could also aid in providing equitable healthcare to the indigenous population. Though this may seem much like a Utopian Dream, but, with proper strategy and resource allocation, this could be and needs to be achieved, to minimize health inequities and disparities.

No end in sight for Rohingya crisis

Beenish Ashraf

An estimated 730,000 Rohingyas had crossed into Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh three years ago in order to flee the persecution in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Although the Rohingyas, who are currently residing in Bangladeshi camps as refugees, wish to return to their homes in Rakhine State, very little has been done to create a safe environment for their return.

The challenges facing the Rohingya people, described by the United Nations as “the most persecuted minority in the world, have unfortunately continued following their arrival in Bangladesh.

How it all began

Before their mass exodus to Bangladesh in 2017, the Rohingya people were the largest Muslim group in Myanmar. The majority of them used to reside in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. According to various estimates, they numbered around one million.

Myanmar government for a long period of time has regarded the Rohingyas as ‘stateless’ people within Myanmar. They have, therefore, been denied citizenship.

Even before the 2017 mass exodus, the Rohingya people, who were described by the United Nations as “the most persecuted minority in the world”, had been forced to leave Myanmar in a number of ethnic cleansing efforts by the Myanmar army and the extremist Buddhist groups.

However, Myanmar military’s and Buddhists extremist groups’ efforts to drive the Rohingyas out of Myanmar reached the height in the later half 2017. In August of the same year, the military and militias attacked the Rohingya villages in Rakhine State. They burnt homes, tortured and killed many Rohingya civilians.

Compelled by the circumstances, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya started to flee their villages. They began their make the journey to Bangladesh, believing that a foreign land would be safer than their homes in Myanmar.

At present, more than a million Rohingya refugees are living in the camps situated in Cox’s Bazaar (Bangladesh), with an estimated average population of 100,000 people per square mile.

Among the refugees living in the camps, almost 50 per cent are children and there are more women than men. They have been living in the makeshift shelters made of bamboo and plastic sheets. Understandably, any structures made of such materials are likely to be intolerably hot in the summer, exposed to the winds and rains during the monsoon season, and extremely cold in the winter.

The Rohingyas are bound to work secretly outside the camps, as they are not allowed to work and cannot leave the camps without the permission.

What’s next?  

Many attempts were made by the Bangladeshi government and civil society as well as international community so that the Rohingyas living in Bangladesh could safely return to their home country. However, these repatriation efforts failed continuously, as Myanmar repeatedly failed to create a safe and secured environment for the Rohingyas in their side of the border.

Many experts strongly believe that Myanmar’s military-controlled-government have so far made all the efforts to discourage the Rohingyas to go ahead for a voluntary repatriation. Hence, the attempts to begin a safe and dignified repatriation process have failed as refugees refuse to go back, fearing more violence.

In 2019, many local, national and international non-government organizations called for human rights for all to be recognised in Rakhine State. They also emphasized that the Rohingya refugees should have a role in deciding the conditions for their return to Myanmar. However, there is no end in sight for this crisis and a peaceful solution is unlikely to arrive anytime soon.

Phenomenal Surge of Domestic Violence/Gender Violence: The Shadow Pandemic of Humanity

Lopa Banerjee

The impact of domestic violence, sexual and physical abuse on woman and young girls have been devastating for years. With the ongoing lockdown measures following the Covid-19 pandemic, complications have increased for the victims and also for organizations that provide support. The article raises awareness on this growing shadow pandemic.

In the postmodern world torn by war and humanitarian crisis, we are also ravaged by a widespread culture of gender-based bullying and discrimination. It is such a shame that in our world where unparalleled depravity and hypocrisy of patriarchy reigns supreme, the sub-human behaviour of ‘humans’ breaks open in direst manifestations every day.

However, driven by a conservative social ethos which is at the core of our upbringing, such tormenting narratives of abuse are mostly shrouded in a culture of silence. Silence that teaches us to endure predatory threats and pain because the words ‘stigma’ and ‘fear’ overpower our conscience infinitely. But for how long would we throttle the screams of the abused? For how long do we continue to brush it all under the carpet because speaking up against such menaces compel us to come out of our plush comfort zones?

Gender-based violence and Domestic violence facts:

Did you know that gender-based violence, which consists of concerted, manipulated violence and abuse against women and young girls, is the most dangerous pandemic of our times, with an estimated one in three women experiencing physical and/or sexual abuse in her lifetime?

Did you know that such ghastly deeds of violence (not excluding domestic violence and intimate partner violence) is a worldwide phenomenon in terms of its overall statistics analyzed by UNFPA? One of United Nation’s leading agencies working proactively for the cause of gender equality and women’s empowerment, UNFPA would give you some startling facts which is bound to scare the living daylights out of you.

• 1 million pregnant women worldwide face life-threatening complications every month, instigated by violence.
• Child marriage, a growing menace in an apparently progressive world, could affect an estimated 70 million over the next 5 years (approximately one in four girls in the developing world is married before age 18.)
• Female genital mutilation (FGM) harms 3 million young girls annually.
• Victims of violence are prone to forced and unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions, traumatic fistula, HIV, and even death.

What faith can we have in a world ravaged with growing female foeticides, abuse on the differently abled, heinous crimes perpetrated by criminals within families? What faith can we have in a world where leaders speak big of an equalitarian society, but oppression and unbelievably brutal acts of rape, murder, maiming of the face and body of Dalit women by upper caste men has been a daily reality? What is the cumulative consciousness of the world doing to fight this menace?

Domestic Violence and Extreme Forms of Abuse during the Quarantine

Period:

In the current socio-political context, the world is fighting tooth and nails with the pandemic of Coronavirus which has been a great leveler, wiping the discrimination between the poor and rich, the young and old, the social influencers and the laymen. As the global lockdown measures imposed this year brings life to almost a standstill, should we forget about another deadly pandemic of humanity which has reportedly grown in leaps and bounds, as an inevitable aftermath? Ironically, the menace of gender-based violence, rape, physical torture, like COVID-19, knows no social, economic or national boundaries!

Experts unanimously contend that even under normal circumstances, violence against women and young girls is a spine-chilling everyday reality. But what happens when nationwide acts of Quarantine serve to escalate abuse, rape and violence, along with serious mental health concerns? In Ukraine, Russia, the number of calls to the National Hotline on Combatting Domestic Violence increased by almost 26 per cent in the first two weeks of quarantine. A startling fact, which we might compare with India, another ‘danger zone’ for gender violence.

Very recently, the National Commission of Women in Hyderabad, India officially declared that an increasing number of abuse and domestic violence are complained, with women bearing the brunt of this upheaval. “Staying with the perpetrator in the same house during the lockdown period makes it even more difficult for the victims”, says Tripurana Venkatratnam, advisor, NCW. How would women in the fringes or in remote areas who do not have access to phones, internet or hotline numbers reach out for help under such dire circumstances?

In the war zones of Syria and in Jordan, outreach workers are struggling hard as with the new social distancing rules, women centres and safe spaces are closing doors, against the ever-growing pandemic of gender violence cases. In Jordan, recently a curfew had been imposed and there was no place to hide for women and young girls, the most vulnerable victims of gender-based violence. Also, the fragile settings of these zones are further impacted in the wake of COVID-19. Hundreds of females are dying each day from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, while on the other hand, their vulnerability to abuse and violence escalates hugely.

It is surely an uphill battle, but there is still some ray of hope as UNPFA recently accumulates a sum of $187.5 million for the treatment and counselling services for survivors of gender-based violence. Let us hope and pray it brings positive changes for the survivors in the coming days, once the lockdown is relaxed.

The shadow pandemic is lurking in the fringes, beyond the purview of the other pandemic. In India, one of the major hubs of coercive violent acts on women and girl children, 70% of women are reportedly the victims, while 38% of Indian men have acknowledged they have physically abused their female partners. According to a recent report published by National Family Health Survey (NHFS-4) released by the Union health ministry, every third women, since the age of 15, has faced domestic violence of various forms in the country. In a culture where patriarchy is prevalent with its various menacing outcomes, where women are raised in a culture of silently supporting the perpetrators of such crimes at home, it is no wonder that such statistics emerge to confirm the existence of the shadow pandemic in the country.

What are we doing to eradicate the shadow pandemic?

Hindutva: A Political and Economic Project of Shared Lies of Brahmanical Caste and Class Order in India

Bhabani Shankar Nayak

India is facing its worst crisis in its history. The Hindutva forces shaped by RSS and politically led by BJP are accelerating the crisis to undo liberal constitutional democracy in India. The political opposition is withering everyday with the help of media, puppet police, investigative agencies and judiciary. The Hindutva blue print is to declare India as a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu state) by viciously diminishing citizenship rights of Muslims, minorities and lower caste people. The success of RSS and BJP over last three decades is based on poisoning the minds of the higher caste Hindus with the help of deceptive propaganda. Hindutva politics is reactionary identity politics of higher caste Hindus, which destroyed the unity of working classes and used lower caste in their political project, which weakened the emancipatory politics of Dalits and lower caste politics. The Hindutva forces have converted mythology as history and deception as an art, which diverts people’s focus on objective reality of their everyday life and material conditions of mass suffering. The Hindutva project is an assault on reason, science and society in India.

Hindutva is a distinctive political project of higher caste Hindus to ensure social, political, cultural and economic control of the masses in India. Every fraudulent control mechanism of Hindutva is essential to normalise all forms of exploitations and naturalise inequalities in India. The apartheid ideals of Brahmanical Hindu caste order are not compatible with constitutional democracy in India. The caste inequality is the foundation of Hindu social order. The deepening of democracy is a threat to Hindu caste order. Therefore, the Brahmanical forces are united behind Hindutva in the name of Hindu unity to uphold their control over Indian society. The colonial apologist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar has territorialised the bigoted idea of Hindu unity in his book Essentials of Hindutva and gave it a cultural outlook, whereas Keshav Hedgewar has shaped the political project of Hindutva by establishing the RSS. The fraudulent call for Akhand Bharat, construction of Ram temple in Ayodhya to cow protection are not only political consolidation of Hindutva forces but also establishment of cultural narrative for economic consolidation of capitalist classes and Brahmanical forces in India.

The fascist character of the Hindutva is concomitant with the requirements of the Indian and global capitalist classes. As Indians are sinking in sorrow and suffering from loss of lives and livelihoods in large scale due to the mismanagement of global pandemic in India, the Indian capitalist classes are accelerating their profit in a massive scale. It is an opportunity for the capitalist classes in India to capture all national resources during the Modi led BJP government. The capitalists have always celebrated dictatorships and authoritarian governments, which help in the expansion of their profit and consolidation of capitalist classes. The corporate capital in India gets massive tax concessions but people face welfare budget cuts. The corporates make money while people suffer in miseries. This is no accident but systematic economic strategy of the Modi government. The result is visible disaster for India and Indians.

India and Indians are collapsing within the bottom of the development pyramid in all development parameters. India is ranked 94 out of 107 in the Global Hunger Index. The rampant growth of inequalities put India in the rank of147 out of 157 countries in the Oxfam Inequality Index. The Water Quality Index puts India in the rank of 120 out of 122 countries. The Air Quality Index puts India in 179 out of 180 countries in the world. The freedom of press is plummeting in India and the county stand in the rank of 140 out of 180 countries. The Environmental Performance Index put India in the rank of 167 out of 180 countries. India is becoming the unhappiness capital of the world ranking 144 out of 156 in the UN World Happiness Index. The health and educational infrastructures are collapsing every day in India but the corporate propaganda machine hides all failures of Hindutva in the name of nationalism. But Hindutva nationalism is not anti-colonial nationalism in India. Hindutva nationalism is based on the idea of higher caste and class unity, which is the other name for fascist bigotry. The Hindutva nationalism is narrow chauvinism based on hatred for religious minorities, lower caste and class people in India.

The love cum arrange marriage between Hindutva and neoliberal capitalism is no accident. The neoliberal capitalism has accelerated Hindutva politics as a dominant class and caste project in India. The RSS in all its political reincarnations from the Jan Sangh to BJP has always been a party of Brahmins and business communities and appealed to the dominant class and caste interests. The right-wing political movement led by Hindutva and reactionary economic policies of neoliberal capitalism have emerged together in India during 1980s. They have strengthened each other over last three decades and helped to consolidate and expand each other’s social, economic, cultural and political base. Both these forces have used lies and deceptive tactics for their growth. The neoliberal capitalism and Hindutva politics are twins. These forces are accumulating profit by both dispossessing and assimilating people based on false narratives of Hindu nationalism. These forces have a common goal; the goal of disciplining labour, diminishing citizenship rights and making people follow orders without questioning the power and authority.

The neoliberal Hindutva is a political and economic project of the capitalist classes in India. The institutional alliance between Hindutva politics and capitalist economy is a natural outcome in which capital accumulates with the support of the state and government and minimises capitalist conflicts and risks. Such an alliance and its outcomes are putting millions of Indians and their future in jeopardy.  If this alliance between Hindutva and capitalism continue to grow deeper and deeper, the greater dangers are awaiting India and Indians.

In this context, it is important to develop political alternatives by forging all forces opposed to the troika of caste, capitalism and Hindutva in India. It is impossible to fight Hindutva and capitalism without fighting caste based discriminatory social order in India. All liberal, progressive, democratic and left forces must realise the dangers of Hindutva fascism and its alliance with capitalism in India. Any compromise or surrender with these forces will breed miseries in large scale for all Indian irrespective of their caste, class, gender, religious and regional background. United struggle against caste, capitalism and Hindu right-wing forces can only save constitutional democracy in India both in short and long run. No progressive struggles have failed in history and no struggle for alternatives will fail in India. Let’s fortify our future by defeating these reactionary forces led Hindutva politics, neoliberal economics and Brahmanical society in India. It is possible and imminent.

Cultivated Lunacy, Nuclear Deterrence and Banning the Nuke

Binoy Kampmark

Is international relations a field for cautious minds, marked by permanent setbacks, or terrain where the bold are encouraged to seize the day?  In terms of dealing with the existential and even unimaginable horror that is nuclear war, the bold have certainly stolen a march.

The signature of Honduras was the 50th required for the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Parties to the treaty are barred from possessing, developing, acquiring, testing, stockpiling, transferring, stationing, or threatening the use of nuclear weapons, amongst other prohibitions.  The treaty also makes it illegal for any of the parties to “assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited” by the document.

Set to enter into force on January 22, 2021, the signing was cheered by the UN Secretary General António Guterres through his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, who saluted “the work of civil society, which has been instrumental in facilitating the negotiation and ratification of the Treaty.”  It was also a harvest for those who had survived nuclear explosions and tests, “the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequence of any use of nuclear weapons.”

Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), was also celebratory in calling the coming into force of the TPNW as “a new chapter for nuclear disarmament.  Decades of activism have achieved what many said was impossible: nuclear weapons are banned.”

ICAN, in a statement released on Sunday, promised that this was “just the beginning.  Once the treaty is in force, all States’ parties will need to implement all of their positive obligations under the treaty and abide by its prohibitions.” In a pointed warning to those states yet to join the TPNW, the organisation suggested that the document’s “power” would reverberate globally in discouraging companies from continuing to manufacture nuclear weapons and institutions from investing in those companies.

In looking at the debates on nuclear weapons, one tension remains ineradicable.  Those who do not possess such weapons, nor put their stake in their murderously reassuring properties, have little interest in seeing them kept.  They can moralise, stigmatise, and condemn from summits of humanitarian principle.  They aspire to the credit of sanity.

Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) and their allies promote themselves as the world weary adults, soberly reliable in the face of such immature flights of fancy.  The opposite is true; their philosophy is a cultivated lunacy accepting of the very thing they wish to do away with.  Everyone might well agree to the abolition of nuclear weapons but disagree on how, exactly, the goal is to be achieved.  If changes are to take place, the school of cultivated lunacy insists it be done gradually, achieved through more acceptable, if constipated fora, such the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  The result is that disarmament takes place slowly or suffers, as is happening now, reversals, usually in moves to modernise current arsenals.

The march of the TPNW is something nuclear weapons states have fought from negotiating rooms to chambers of ratification.   US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-proliferation Christopher Ford stated the common wisdom on that side of the fence in August 2017.  The TPNW suggested that advocates for the ban were “fundamentally unserious about addressing the real challenges of maintaining peace and security in a complicated and dangerous world, and unserious about trying to make that world a genuinely safer place.”

The joint statement released by the United States, United Kingdom and France on July 7, 2017 was sternly disapproving, even ill-wishing.  The countries promised to avoid signing, ratifying or ever becoming parties to it.  Obligations towards nuclear weapons on their part had not, and would not change.  It would, they stated menacingly, do nothing to alter or add to the nature of customary international law.  They could point, triumphantly, at the absence of other nuclear weapon states and those relying on nuclear deterrence in the creative process.

Such sentiments have been reiterated with the promise that the TPNW will enter into force.  In a letter to signatories from the Trump administration obtained by Associated Press, the United States claimed that the five original nuclear powers (US, Russia, China, Britain and France), along with NATO, stood “unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions of the treaty”. The document “turns back the clock on verification and disarmament” and threatened the NPT, “considered the cornerstone of global non-proliferation efforts.”  Already divisive, the TPNW risked “further entrenching divisions in existing non-proliferation and disarmament that offer the only realistic prospect for consensus-based progress”.

The two words – “nuclear deterrence” – remain ludicrously attractive to policy classes who learned to love the nuke from its inception.  The nuke is paternally comforting, a stabilising foothold in a treacherous world.  While it has, at its core, a terrifying rationale, it brings with it, claim its defenders, the power to keep the peace, albeit through terror.  As the joint statement served to remind the starry-eyed abolitionists, nuclear deterrence had been vital “in keeping the peace in Europe and North Asia for 70 years.”  The TPNW did little to address the security dimension and would not serve to eliminate “a single nuclear weapon and will not enhance any country’s security, nor international peace and security.”

Countries such as Australia insist that their alliance obligations with powers possessing nuclear weapons – in their case, the United States – make signing and ratifying the TPNW incompatible.  Under the Security Treaty between Australia, New Zealand and the United States (ANZUS), goes this argument, Australia would be expected to participate in joint operations that might involve the deployment of nuclear weapons.  In the blunt assessment of Australia’s former foreign minister, Gareth Evans, joining the TPNW would effectively see Canberra “tearing up our US alliance commitment”.  A very orthodox reading, though not necessarily accurate, given that the ANZUS regime is not, strictly speaking, a nuclear one.

More to the point is the elevation of extended nuclear deterrence to the level of a state religion, streaked with schizophrenia.  The Australian 2013 Defence White Paper discloses this in full: “As long as nuclear weapons exist, we rely on the nuclear forces of the United States to deter nuclear attack on Australia.  Australia is confident in the continuing viability of extended nuclear deterrence under the Alliance, while strongly supporting ongoing efforts towards global nuclear disarmament.”  Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute could only describe such a policy as “absurd, obscene and reckless,” not least because it is premised on an assurance that has never been given.

Certain voices earning their keep in this field argue that the regimes of the TPNW and the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty are not exclusive but complimentary projects.  A claim has been made that the TPNW, far from diverging from the NPT with heretical defiance, is compatible with it.  As Thomas Hajnoczi suggests, the NPT was not intended as a complete and “comprehensive regulation of all aspects that were indispensable for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, non-proliferation, and nuclear disarmament.”  The TPNW added to the “existing ‘building’ a layer necessary to realize a world without nuclear weapons.”

The international law fraternity is divided on this.  Arguments rage over the vagueness of the TPNW about legal obligations, along with potential tensions vis-à-vis the NPT.  Newell Highsmith and Mallory Stewart go so far as to see the lineaments of discrimination in the TPNW, seeing it as an unviable “legal vehicle for disarmament” with prospects to harm non-proliferation.  The result? Two estranged regimes, parallel and never meeting.

For the establishment veterans and their converts in the nuclear disarmament business, nuclear weapons remain a perverse form of reassurance and currency.  It keeps arms chair theorists, planners, technicians and engineers in jobs.   Abolishing them would be tantamount to altering the power balance of international relations.  It might discourage that daily quotient of self-hate and suspicion that makes the human world go round.  For the fantasists of nuclear deterrence, this would be even more diabolical.

UK Nightingale hospitals readied as pandemic threatens to overwhelm NHS

Ben Trent

Coronavirus cases in the UK continue to mount, with around 8 million people in England set to be under Tier 3 local lockdowns by the end of the week—the highest alert level. Over 200,000 people in Warrington were placed under Tier 3 restrictions last night and nearly 700,000 people in areas of Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands will follow them this Thursday.

The UK recorded nearly 43,000 cases over the weekend and 20,890 on Monday. Another 174 people died with COVID-19 on Saturday, 151 on Sunday, and 102 yesterday—totals not seen since early June.

The Nightingale Hospital North West at Manchester's main exhibition centre

Seven temporary Nightingale hospitals set up in England in the spring are set to be reopened. They were ostensibly established to alleviate some of the immense pressure on an already overwhelmed and under-resourced NHS hospital network. The Manchester Nightingale reopened this week, following a local surge of COVID cases in the North West, and Nightingales in Sunderland and Harrogate are on standby.

The deputy chief medical officer for England acknowledged that the rapid increase in cases was not confined to the North and that the virus was spreading nationwide. The R (Reproduction) rate of the virus is above 1 throughout the UK, with cases continuing to rise in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The build-up of hospitalised cases is currently slower than during the initial stages of lockdown, which saw some 3,000 admissions a day—three times more than the average combined admissions for all respiratory viruses in the height of winter.

As the pandemic hit the UK, tens of thousands of operations were cancelled. Waiting lists over the summer hit record highs. The pressure to clear through this backlog, while simultaneously handling the resurgence of the virus, will have dire effects on an already beleaguered NHS.

A consultant in Manchester told the Guardian, “the difference this time is that we’re trying to continue all of the elective activity and that’s going to be challenging.” She added, “we were all concerned that the winter would bring with it other pressures but we were quietly hopeful we had some immunity, but it’s just not been the case and it’s quite obvious now that this is a bona fide second wave.”

A recent NHS providers survey noted that staff burnout and the backlog were taking a frightful toll on the health service. Ninety-nine percent of the 199 hospitals surveyed said they were concerned about staff burnout across the workforce. At least 94 percent were concerned about the added seasonal pressure of the winter period. The British Medical Association (BMA) warned of the many problems associated with the impeding Brexit scenario, which will likely see a displacement of NHS workers and also disrupt supply chains.

These are the conditions for a catastrophe in the NHS this winter.

During the winter of 2016, the NHS was brought to its knees across a series of weeks by a bad influenza season, with bed occupancy hitting 94.7 percent—almost 10 percent over the “safe” threshold. In the first week of January 2016, 18,000 people had “trolley waits” in corridors of over four hours, and 485 people had “trolley waits” of over 12 hours.

The NHS has since seen four more years of relentless attacks by Tory governments, leading to cutbacks, sell-offs and staff departures. According to official figures obtained by the Guardian, the NHS urgently needs another £1 billion if it is to cope with the resurgence of COVID-19, “deal with the coming winter and restart routine operations…”

An article on the nursing blog site NursingNotes reveals that there are currently around 43,000 nursing vacancies, raising the question of who will staff the additional Nightingale hospitals.

The article also drew attention to the fact that MPs, not NHS workers, were granted a pay rise this year. They will receive a further £3,300. It stated, “Over the past decade, the salary of MPs has risen by a massive £19,694 while in stark contrast the salary of the most experienced frontline nurses has risen by just £3081—far below the rate of inflation.” This elicited outrage on the Facebook page of NursingNotes, with over 140 comments in response.

Carol commented, “It will mean all the clinics and outpatients will close again! Minor ops will be put back another year! How will the nhs ever catch up? Mind you the private hospitals will still do their cosmetic surgeries I expect!”

Joe wrote, “Nightingales are a joke. They’ll stand empty again because they don’t have the staff or equipment to properly keep them open. This is nothing more than a PR stunt designed to provide a false sense of security to people.”

Jart said, “All MPs’, Boris and his cabinet should work there [at a Nightingale hospital] as they are about to receive the biggest payrise (sic) they’ll have in a decade!”

Another, Angie, wrote “I don’t think many nurses would risk going back to the frontline after the devastating numbers and loss of lives in the first wave.”

This was in reference to the over 650 deaths of health and social care workers directly from the deadly virus.

The Nightingale hospitals were, from the very start, a PR stunt by the Johnson government, designed to give the impression that it was mobilising the necessary resources to combat the virus.

As a physician told the WSWS in April, “They [the government] knew these hospitals could not function properly. COVID-19 patients could never be managed properly there. They did not build air ventilation and air-conditioning systems that are needed in ITU [intensive therapy unit] to safely ventilate patients. They were largely unsafe for other patients—they would spread the infection very quickly.”

The physician described the cynical motivation behind the government's decision to open the hospitals. “They were only built because of public opposition to the government’s herd immunity policies and anger over the loss of so many lives… but they were built as a temporary measure without any plan. The most important part of any hospital is the staffing—but even existing hospitals are lacking staff. We’ve seen more than 100,000 staff vacancies and due to government austerity, the number of hospital beds has been reduced by more than 30,000 since 2008.”

The Independent reported last week that a new Nightingale hospital might be built for Liverpool, due to the over 90 percent capacity of intensive care units in Liverpool’s hospitals. This gives Liverpool the third-highest bed occupancy rate in Europe, and the highest in the UK. The situation in Liverpool’s Royal Hospital is exacerbated by the fact that two floors previously used to treat COVID-19 patients are now out of use due to building work.

The ruling elite are making the same noises as at the start of the spring lockdown to try to keep a lid on mounting popular anger across the country. Johnson’s government pretends to take steps to combat the second wave of the virus even as it pursues a policy of herd immunity.

The trade unions and Labour party offer no alternative. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has been a loyal ally of the Johnson government on all major aspects of policy regarding the pandemic. The trade unions have helped implement unsafe workplace guidelines which have been responsible for hundreds of deaths of health care workers due to COVID-19. On Monday, NursingNotes reported the death of another nurse, Emma Vianzon, who survived a brain aneurysm and kidney transplant, only to die after contracting COVID-19.

Automation drive accelerates in meatpacking industry in response to coronavirus pandemic

Cordell Gascoigne

The spread of coronavirus throughout the meatpacking industry, where tens of thousands of workers have been infected in the United States alone, is greatly accelerating plans by major meatpacking companies to introduce automation and robotics into the plants.

Nationwide, at least 48,000 meatpacking workers have been infected and 245 have died, according to The Fern. The major meatpacking companies are framing their investments in automation as a humane response to outbreaks in their workforces. However, the same companies, with the support of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and other unions, have forced workers to remain on the line throughout the pandemic and have worked to cover up the true extent of the infections. Management at JBS’ beef plant in Greeley, Colorado were revealed by two whistleblowers to have deliberately allowed potentially infected workers into the plant and threatened health care screeners who sent symptomatic workers home to quarantine. Even before the pandemic, the meatpacking industry was among the most unsafe, with massive rates of carpal tunnel and other repetitive motion injuries.

Workers in a Hog Slaughter and Processing Plant (Wikimedia Commons)

Instead, the coronavirus is being seized upon to implement an “Amazonization” of the workforce, using advances in robotics, in the manner pioneered by the online retail giant, to greatly intensify the exploitation of an already low-wage workforce. No doubt a crucial aim is to “thin out” the ranks of increasingly restive meatpacking workers, who have carried out wildcat strikes and protests at several facilities in opposition to the companies’ “herd immunity” policies.

Tyson Foods, the poultry titan of the meat industry, has rapidly increased its investments in automation. Over the past three years, Tyson Foods has invested over $500 million, including the founding in August 2019 of the Tyson Manufacturing Automation Center (TMAC) in Springdale, Arkansas, near its headquarters.

TMAC has been focused on developing automation and robotics for the company production line in order to help improve efficiency. This summer, they tested a robot to perform such tasks as moving chicken breasts from a conveyor belt into tray packs for sale in grocery stores. TMAC’s main focus is the development of an automated deboning system for poultry. The efforts to create and implement “robot butchers” is being sped up, according to Tyson Chief Executive Noel White.

Like Tyson Foods, Canada’s Lesters Foods was forced to close many of its meat-processing facilities early on in the pandemic. Lesters Foods’ president, Henry Mizrahi, sought automation as an alternative to maintain production. Lesters Foods has invested millions in a five-year plan to increase automation, including an initial plan to install robotic arms in one of its facilities capable of moving packages into larger containers for shipping, to reduce the rate at which workers remain in close proximity to one another.

Mizrahi, capitalizing upon the pandemic’s displacement of workers, is certain automation is “worth the expense,” adding, “When we started to see [COVID-19 affect other plants], I saw how tragic the impact was on human health. The pandemic has certainly accelerated our strategy of planning for more robotic equipment.”

Automation, Mizrahi says, will allow “increase food security and improve plant safety.” But in reality, workers are being replaced, not protected. The drive for automation no doubt has the potential to free workers from laborious and life-threatening tasks, particularly during a pandemic, but the result of automation under capitalism is to increase the exploitation of workers through layoffs, speedup and wage cuts.

Meat plants account for $1 billion in global annual sales of automation supplies and services. Georgia-based Cantrell-Gainco, which sells chicken deboning equipment manufactured in Japan’s Mayekawa plant, has fielded double the usual number of inquiries since the coronavirus pandemic hit North America.

Mayekawa, which has manufacturing plants in Brazil, Europe, India, Mexico, Serbia, South Korea, and the United States, issued a statement on global sales stating its chicken deboning robot parts sales are set to rise by more than $28 million from $32 million in 2019 to $45 million this year and $60 million in 2021. This includes North American sales regarding affecting Tyson Foods, Sanderson Farms, and Peco Foods.

In Brazil, the country’s fourth-largest pork processor, Frimesa, has intensified its automation efforts as COVID-19 sweeps the nation, spending R$20 million, or $3.53 million USD, annually. Claudecir dos Santos, Frimesa’s research manager, said that the automation will receive a 5 percent annual increase in funding. Frimesa’s Assis Chateaubriand plant under construction in the state of Parana will include five robots, costing approximately €500,000, or $586,000, each.

Olymel LP, one of Canada’s largest pork and poultry processors, had a plan for automation before the pandemic forced the company to temporarily close its Yamachiche plant for more than two weeks in late March, after 9 out of the more than 1,000 workers tested positive for the disease. Upon the facility’s reopening, the company decided to accelerate the plan, which entails the use of robots to sort meat cuts, pick and pack shipments, and stack crates.

Pilgrim’s Pride, a multi-national food company mostly owned by JBS SA, is currently one of the largest poultry producers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and the second-largest chicken producer in Mexico. After exiting bankruptcy in December 2009, it moved its US headquarters to Greeley, Colorado in 2011. The company said in July it will use automation to double capacity of a Minnesota plant to produce chicken sold in tray packs.

It is worth recalling that over the summer a grand jury in Denver, Colorado indicted Jayson Penn, the president and CEO of Pilgrim’s Pride, along with a former executive at the Colorado-based chicken supplier, for price-fixing. Two executives, Mikell Fries and Scott Brady, from a Claxton Poultry Farms located in the state of Georgia, were also indicted.

Chief commercial officer Henrik Andersen of Denmark’s automation manufacturer Frontmatec said, “The outbreaks of [COVID-19] will put extra spice into the need for automation because the fewer people you have, the less likely you are to suffer from these outbreaks.”

In 2018, the global meat sector was valued at $945.7 billion. It is forecast to increase to $1,142.9 billion by 2023. Production of meat worldwide saw an increase between 2016 and 2018, from 317.2 million metric tons to around 330.5 million metric tons. The world is projected to produce 60.8 million metric tons of beef in 2020, down 922K metric tons from 2019 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The constitutional referendum and class struggle in Chile

Mauricio Saavedra

Chileans voted by an overwhelming 78 percent majority Sunday in favor of a new constitution to replace the charter imposed by means of a rigged plebiscite in 1980 by the hated military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Turnout in the referendum was the highest seen since the adoption of voluntary voting in 2012.

Sunday’s referendum was the outcome of a year-long operation by the country’s parliamentary “left,” the trade union apparatus and pseudo-left groups to divert the explosive development of mass struggles by Chile’s workers and youth against capitalism into a futile electoral campaign. The aim is to dissipate a revolutionary situation amid a growing danger of authoritarian rule and dictatorship.

People line up for their turn to vote during a referendum to decide whether the country should replace its 40-year-old constitution, in Santiago, Chile, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2020.(AP Photo/Esteban Felix)

The developments in Chile are part of an international eruption of the class struggle over soaring poverty and economic insecurity fueling broad-based anti-capitalist sentiment. Since the 2008 financial crisis in which governments ransacked the public purse to save global financial and corporate elites, working class living standards have plummeted.

Like their counterparts internationally, Chilean capitalism, and its state institutions, have lost all credibility and are confronting a historic crisis of rule. They are responding to this existential threat from below, as they did during other critical points in the 20th century, by calling upon the services of the bureaucratic labor organizations and the opportunistic economic nationalists that make up the Chilean “left.” They count upon these political parties and unions to disorient, divert and render harmless the struggles of the working class. At the same time, they are preparing the forces of state repression to unleash against the masses.

In October 2019, student civil disobedience triggered by a hike in public transport was transformed almost overnight as millions of workers, layers of the middle class and youth joined protests, strikes and demonstrations across the country. A mass movement opened up against decades of extreme social inequality, police violence, and in opposition to a deeply hated political caste that emerged in the transition from military to civilian rule.

President Sebastian Piñera responded to the protests by decreeing a state of emergency and curfew, and by deploying the Armed Forces for the first time in decades. Flanked by Gen. Javier Iturriaga and ex-Defense Minister Alberto Espina, Piñera broadcast on live television on October 20, 2019: “We are at war with a powerful, ruthless enemy, who respects nothing and no one, who is willing to use violence and crime without any limits.”

By November 12, Piñera’s “war” resulted in countless human rights abuses by Carabineros, Special Forces, black berets, and the military: two dozen had been killed or disappeared, hundreds had suffered severe injuries and mutilations caused by munitions and thousands who were rounded up suffered beatings, sexual abuse, rape, and torture.

The ultra-right government also brought forward a series of police state and dictatorial measures later passed by the Senate and that are now in operation. One bill criminalizes social protests with long prison terms. More than 2,000 political prisoners—mostly juveniles and young people arrested for protesting—languish in custody without being sentenced for any crime. Another bill allows the president to call out the military to protect “strategic infrastructure” and to place the branches of government under military supervision without declaring a State of Exception. Yet another revamps the National Intelligence Agency to combine military, security and public order divisions, permitting vast intelligence gathering operations like those employed by Latin American dictatorships and US imperialism with Operation Condor in the 1970s and 80s.

But, as these measures only further incensed and radicalized the protests and amid the second general strike, Piñera in mid-November turned to the parliamentary “left,” to join national unity talks, which all of them—the Socialist Party (PS), the Party for Democracy (PPD), the Radicals, the Liberals, the Humanists, the Greens, the pseudo-left Broad Front (Frente Amplio) coalition and the Stalinist coalition around the Communist Party—accepted.

Piñera, in referring to the “Agreement for Social Peace and a New Constitution,” explained: “I had to decide between two paths: the path of force through the establishment of a new state of emergency or the path of reason…we chose the path of reason to give a new opportunity for peace.”

From that moment on, the parliamentary “left” set itself the task of redirecting the explosive mass struggles into the safe parameters of parliamentary politics by promoting the referendum that they claim will permit the “people” to decide the constitution, and, ergo, the character of the state itself. It took one year and a pandemic to push this agenda through.

This sowing of national exceptionalism—that Chile rests on a supposedly “democratic” and “parliamentary” tradition and that it’s institutions and repressive apparatus adhere to “constitutional” norms—is the raison d’être of the Chilean fake left who in almost a century of existence and through incalculable permutations has advanced this theory as it has sat in the Congress and the executive, dominated the trade union apparatus and social organizations.

This theory, promoted most forcefully by Chile’s Stalinist Communist Party (PCCh), paved the way to the 1973 military overthrow of the Popular Unity coalition government of Salvador Allende and the violent repression of the Chilean working class.

Now they attempt to sow the illusion that the state is an independent arbiter that can be controlled by the people. In doing so they demonstrate their rejection of the Marxist theory of the class nature of the state: that it is an instrument that upholds the political dictatorship of the capitalist class, who, when threatened by revolution, sweep aside parliament and constitutional norms and rule by force.

That in a nutshell is what the Stalinists concealed from workers and youth during the 1968-73 revolutionary period when they claimed that Carabineros and the military were “the people in uniform.” That is what they are attempting today with the promotion of the Constitutional referendum.

Without a doubt, Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution is an authoritarian instrument used against the working class. Its author, Jaime Guzman, founder of Independent Democratic Union (UDI), drew inspiration from Nazi German jurist Carl Schmitt and reactionary Spanish clericalism.

But what the left leaves out is that in his 2005 “democratizing reforms” of the existing constitution ex-Socialist Party president Ricardo Lagos maintained the most anti-working class provisions such as Article 9, Chapter 1 on terrorism. This article has been used to protect forestry, energy and mining corporate interests in La Araucania from the oppressed indigenous population with a massive military buildup.

A critical role in the promotion of illusions in constitutional reform has been played by the Chilean Communist Party (PCCh). This is in line with its entire history. Founded in 1922 under the leadership of Luis Emilio Recabarren (1876-1924), the party came under the influence of the rightward shift that accompanied the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union—with the regression to the nationalist theory of “Socialism in a Single Country” and the resuscitation of the Menshevik “two-stage” theory of revolution.

Following a political conflict with its founder Recabarren, a young layer of the PCCh leadership was co-opted into the state. Six members participated in the drafting of the 1925 bourgeois constitution, written as the country, in the middle of a deep economic crisis provoked by the collapse of saltpeter exports and declining British imperialist interests, was in the throes of explosive labor struggles and a military revolt.

This was a counterrevolutionary document imposed by the populist regime of Arturo Alessandri to circumvent the development of a revolutionary socialist movement. Unlike the French and American revolutionary documents that derived their authority from a sovereign people, in the 1925 constitution “sovereignty resides essentially in the nation” and “delegates its exercise in the authorities.”

This is because by the turn of the 20th century, Chile—like many other semi-colonial countries under the domination of imperialism—had created powerful battalions of the working class whose many social grievances and demands came into conflict with the profit interests of the saltpeter and copper mining barons. From 1905 to 1925, the deeply anti-communist Prussian-trained Chilean army had put down hundreds of strikes, massacring between 5,300 and 6,800 workers.

The development of the PCCh was in line with the sharp rightward shifts of Soviet Stalinism, adopting in the 1930s the policy of the Popular Front, which it has maintained until this day.

Ostensibly devised to fight fascism, with its adoption of the Popular Front Stalinism renounced the objective of proletarian socialist revolution and openly defended capitalist property relations by calling for an alliance with the “liberal,” “democratic” and “republican” sections of the bourgeoisie. This was the basis of Stalinism’s betrayal of the Spanish Revolution in the 1930s, and it is what the PCCh advanced in the 1970s when it betrayed the Chilean Revolution.

Rewriting the constitution will not bring an end to the capitalist crisis, the class struggle or the threat of dictatorship in Chile. The critical question confronting the Chilean working class and youth is that of revolutionary leadership. A new party must be built based upon the genuine program of revolutionary international socialism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International. Founded by Leon Trotsky, only this international party has defended the political continuity of Marxism through its implacable fight against Stalinism, Social Democracy, Pabloite revisionism and every other form of nationalist anti-Marxism. To take the revolutionary fight forward in Chile youth and workers must study these strategic political and theoretical experiences and draw the necessary conclusions.

Brazilian Morenoites support pro-military parties in mayoral elections

Miguel Andrade

With the first round of the Brazilian mayoral elections less than a month away, the Morenoites of the Workers Revolutionary Movement (MRT), affiliated with the French NPA’s Révolution Permanente faction and the Argentine PTS, are lining up behind the pro-military campaigns being conducted by what passes for the opposition to fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, including Brazil’s largest pseudo left formation, the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL).

Contrary to its Argentine counterpart, which placed fourth in the 2019 presidential elections and has two national representatives in Congress acting as a left faction of the Peronist government, the MRT has no ballot status in Brazil.

Determined not to let this stand in the way of its quest for positions in the bourgeois state, the MRT has launched slates within the PSOL, under conditions in which both the PSOL and the Workers Party (PT) are using the mayoral elections to promote Brazil’s murderous Military Police—which kills more than 5,000 Brazilians a year—as a key constituency of opposition to Bolsonaro.

The PT and the PSOL are not concerned with Bolsonaro’s criminal neglect of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing nearly 160,000 recorded deaths and 5.4 million infections, or the unprecedented rise in social inequality, with 10 million Brazilians losing their jobs, while the number of billionaires has risen by 16 percent. Their opposition to Bolsonaro is rooted both in the fears within the ruling class that he will provoke uncontrollable social opposition and in the dissatisfaction of national and international business interests with his alignment with Donald Trump’s unilateral diplomacy.

Their attitude was summed up in the infamous words of former PT president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, according to whom “the gravest aspect” of the political situation in the country is not Bolsonaro’s murderous herd immunity policy or the massive growth of poverty and social inequality, but that Bolsonaro “takes advantage of collective suffering to, covertly, commit crimes against the country” and “subjects our soldiers and ambassadors to vexing situations.”

In order to advance their right-wing, chauvinist policies, the PT and PSOL are running no less than 152 candidates for mayor, vice mayor and the city councils who come from the military and the police. Nationally, the number of armed forces and military police officers running for mayor or vice mayor has doubled from the last mayoral elections in 2016. The PT has also openly aligned itself with the parties that elected Bolsonaro or his sons in 2018 in 145 cities. In the place where the PT was born, the industrial city of São Bernardo do Campo, it is sharing a slate with the Brazilian Labor Party (PTB), which as recently as July invited Bolsonaro to join. The PSOL itself has also forged local level alliances with the far-right Social Christian Party (PSC), to which one of Bolsonaro’s sons belong.

The rationale behind the proliferation of military candidates was stated bluntly by Gen. Roberto Peternelli, a representative from São Paulo in the Brazilian congress House for the party that elected Bolsonaro, the Social Liberal Party (PSL). In an interview with the conservative daily Estado de S. Paulo on September 29, Peternelli welcomed the fact that more members of the military were running for all parties, “from PSOL to PSL.” He insisted that running for office as candidates for so-called left parties “doesn’t weaken military principles.” In other words, the military High Command rests assured that, by running for the “left” parties, military candidates are not opposing those propping up the Bolsonaro government.

Both the PT and the PSOL are seeking to give this military takeover a “left” veneer by using the whole toolbox of petty-bourgeois identity politics and nationalism. They are trying to convince workers that their main military candidates—Military Police Maj. Denice Santiago for mayor of Salvador and Military Police Col. Íbis Souza for vice mayor of Rio de Janeiro—are not only “left” soldiers, but the representatives of a wider “left military” constituency.

Maj. Santiago took the opportunity in an interview with Brazil’s largest daily, Folha de S. Paulo, to trace a straight line between herself and Carlos Lamarca, the iconic Army dissident who took up arms against the 1964-1985 dictatorship and is promoted in petty bourgeois circles as a Brazilian Che Guevara. She cited his example to tell the paper “we had many left-wing military officers.”

For his part, Col. Souza—who is nothing less than a former commander-general of Rio’s military police, which kills 1,800 people a year, out of a population of just over 16 million—has also resorted to left-sounding phraseology. In a DW interview, he declared that “one of the greatest left-wing leaders in Brazil was an Army officer, Luís Carlos Prestes,” the decades-long leader of the Communist Party, from the 1930s to the 1970s. In the same interview, Col. Souza preposterously attributes to Lenin platitudes about the “complexity of the world” to justify PSOL’s unprincipled political line, and adds with pseudo-academic charlatanry: “I try to show to the people that the state is a field under dispute.”

The historical record and the fate of Carlos Lamarca and Luís Carlos Prestes expose the danger posed to the working class by the treacherous operations being mounted by the PT and PSOL. On the eve of the 1964 US-backed military coup, the Communist Party leader, Prestes, was overseeing the bankrupt Stalinist political line of subordinating the workers to “left” sections of the military and the bourgeois reformist president João Goulart. The case was made that there should be no break with the bourgeois state, but it should be “disputed.”

As the coup developed and the military stood loyal to the capitalist state, the only resistance coming from the Communist Party was by members who broke with the party line and desperately took to guerrilla warfare. Lamarca, who was not a party member, tragically took this route, and his small guerrilla group was quickly obliterated by the dictatorship. For his part, Prestes was flown to the Soviet Union, facing none of the consequences of the Stalinist betrayals.

By supporting the PSOL, the MRT is providing a left cover for precisely the same treacherous line.

In 2018, the MRT used its international feminist Bread and Roses wing to support an upper-middle class alliance known as “Ele Não” (Not Him, i.e., Bolsonaro) which called for a vote for the PT’s presidential candidate Fernando Haddad. Bread and Roses released a resolution titled “Against Bolsonaro, for women’s lives” in which it called for standing “side by side with the workers, women, blacks, youth and LGBTs who hate Bolsonaro and want to defeat him on the ballot by voting for Haddad.”

With the mayoral campaign exposing as a farce the claim that the PT and PSOL represent any “opposition” to Bolsonaro, the MRT has withdrawn its city council slate in Rio, feigning indignation over the nomination of Col. Souza. Yet it is maintaining its slates in cities like São Paulo, where the PSOL is running its 2018 presidential candidate, Guilherme Boulos for mayor. Boulos is a professional anti-Marxist academic who built his political career as the head of a squatters movement, the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST), one of several “social movements” that pseudo-left charlatans claim are a substitute for the working class.

As part of PSOL’s upper-middle-class politics, the MRT’s São Paulo slate is entirely directed at “identity” issues, beginning with its semi-anarchist “collective” character. The MRT advertises three candidates instead of one for the same electoral position—a political and legal farce, since only one representative will sit as a city councilor—claiming this “collective” character—balanced with different gender and race “identities”—is a reassurance of “representativity.”

Its main campaign event so far was a “bike rally” for the legalization of marijuana, claiming that such a policy, already implemented in a number of capitalist countries, would curb the class-based violence of the capitalist state against workers, which they portray in racial terms as stemming from a racist police force. They also presented on September 1 a program for “blacks” centered on the demand for “equal pay” for blacks and whites.

Under conditions in which workers of all races, nationalities and ethnicities are facing mass unemployment, long-term poverty and destitution, this demand is being used in Brazil, as in other countries, as a means of settling accounts among the richest 10 percent of the population. The MRT supports the same identity politics used by the PT and PSOL to claim their mayoral candidates in Salvador and Rio will “transform” the cities by becoming their first black female mayors.

When the MRT makes any criticism of the PT, it characterizes it as a “class conciliationist” party as opposed to what it calls “directly bourgeois” parties. This intentionally muddled definition is designed to promote the illusion that workers can pressure the PT to change course. Thus, in a July 1 editorial, Esquerda Diário stated that “The left should unite in class struggle, not with putschists and bosses.” After making perfunctory criticism of what it calls PT’s “bet” in allying with the most reactionary elements, it states that “all of those who consider themselves as the socialist left should bet everything [emphasis added]” on “demanding that the union bureaucracies break their paralysis.”

This attempt to provide a left cover for bourgeois forces and the unions directly collaborating with the hated Bolsonaro is part of a long tradition of Morenoism, an extreme form of Pabloite liquidationism. This includes the Morenoite tendency’s collaboration with the Peronist government in Argentina in the 1970s, even as it set up fascist militias in the unions and paved the way to the 1976 military coup.

The mayoral elections in Brazil have provided further evidence that the pseudo-left MRT and its Morenoite affiliates in Argentina, France and elsewhere are in no sense Marxist organizations that speak for the interests of the working class or fight for genuinely revolutionary socialist politics.