Switzerland’s Failing Democracy

Charles Stevenson

Last September, the Bundesplatz in Bern, over which sit the Swiss federal executive and legislative bodies, played host to the largest acts of peaceful civil disobedience in the country’s history. Several hundred environmental activists were arrested after calling on the government to take the necessary action for Switzerland to fulfill its pledges in respect to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate.

While Switzerland was the first to submit a pledge in the lead-up to the convention, these initial targets are insufficient for the framework’s aims. Moreover, these first timid steps have still not been passed into law. What happened to Switzerland’s desire to lead the way on climate?

The answer lies in the much-vaunted Swiss system of governance. First, the country’s history of strong federalism insures that power is not concentrated at the national level, but rather shared with the cantons and communes, making it difficult to enact the kind of sweeping measures for which the current situation calls.

Second, the executive branch at each of these levels comprises a council reflecting the party composition of the legislature. In addition, the Swiss model includes a form of direct democracy in which any law passed by the legislature must be ratified in a nationwide referendum if 50,000 citizens sign a petition in opposition to it.

Switzerland also boasts a wealth of political parties – twelve are represented in the federal parliament, and the federal executive council is made up of members of four of the largest. This collegial system means that laws are written on the basis of a consensus from the breadth of the parties’ positions.

As a result, Switzerland’s legislation is always a compromise thrashed out between the left and the right, as opposed to the elective dictatorship that characterizes two-party systems like those of the UK or the US.

On September 27th, for example, the Swiss population voted on the introduction of paid paternity leave, but the pressure of pro-business lobbies within parliament meant that the final bill was cut down to just two weeks. The legislation was passed by a wide margin in the subsequent referendum, but it still leaves Switzerland lagging behind most other rich countries in terms of parental leave.

The Swiss also pride themselves on their lack of a political ruling class. In theory, all legislatures, including at the national level, comprise non-professionals who make a living as farmers, teachers and lawyers.

In practice, the demands on their time mean this is rarely the case for today’s parliamentarians, but it does result in a surreal arrangement in which many of the federal legislature’s bourgeois majority also sit on the boards of everything from banks to insurance companies.

The clear conflicts-of-interest this situation creates are thrown into sharp relief by a popular initiative, due to be voted on by the public in November, “for responsible multinationals”.

The text aims to enshrine in the Swiss constitution the basic principle that corporations headquartered in Switzerland must respect human rights and the environment, but neither chamber of the federal legislature was able to scrape together the votes to support the bill.

That the Swiss government is so beholden to corporate power goes a long way towards explaining why it has so far failed to come to terms with the climate and ecological emergency. At a time when 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions, governments must take the measures needed to safeguard their citizens through this century by confronting the entrenched power of fossil capital.

Given that Switzerland’s elected representatives have proven unequal to the task, new forms of democracy are required to avoid environmental breakdown.

One initiative that has been gaining traction in several countries is the idea of a citizens’ assembly. These are groups drawn by sortition – in the same way as a jury – so as to form a random subset reflecting the population they are meant to represent.

Members are brought together to debate an issue with the support of experts, who are present to answer any technical questions. Not only do participants take the proceedings seriously, they tend to reach consensus when other forms of deliberation stall.

Nowhere has this approach been more successful than in Ireland during the referendum on repealing the eighth constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. In 2016, few questions were as divisive in the Catholic-majority republic, yet the televised debates of the country’s citizens’ assembly allowed voters to see their fellow citizens, as opposed to career politicians, discussing many of the concerns they share.

Despite the bitter campaign, the amendment was passed by an overwhelming 67%, reflecting a country united, against all expectations.

In France, the citizens’ convention on climate, convened this spring, put forward 149 proposals. Many, such as the criminalization of ecocide – the deliberate destruction of the environment – are some of the most radical passed by a national government.

Switzerland’s collegial political system, rooted in multi-partisanship and compromise, may explain much of its longstanding stability, but if it hopes to respect its Paris Agreement pledges, it needs to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Achieving this aim requires breaking out of the jaded debates currently playing out in the political arena. Transitioning energy and transport sectors away from fossil fuels and implementing sweeping nature conservation programs calls for the creative thinking that concerned citizens, not vested interests, can produce.

To transform society to the degree demanded by the crises at hand, Switzerland must first revitalize its unresponsive democracy. A binding citizens’ assembly on the climate and ecological emergency is an excellent place to start.

UK’s Chaos Unbound

Kenneth Surin

Each week, it looks as if a new rock bottom has been reached in the UK where the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and negotiations with the EU on a Brexit deal are concerned. The following week then reveals that further depths have now been plumbed, and the story is then repeated in each of the following weeks.

The negotiations with the EU point increasingly towards a No Deal Brexit, which will be catastrophic economically, piling yet more misery on top of the economic chaos caused by the Conservatives’ arbitrary and not-thought-through Covid-19 lockdowns and their accompanying band-aid job support schemes.

As he sinks in the opinion polls, it becomes clearer by the day that Boris “BoJo” Johnson has no idea of what constitutes an adequate response to the pandemic. His proposed solutions are always ad hoc, the latest “solution” usually countermanding the one proffered a couple of days before.

BoJo’s government got the UK into this mess by overlooking warnings early in the year as the pandemic moved steadily across Europe; not really bothering to develop an adequate testing system; closing the UK’s borders much too late; not having a functioning quarantine system; insisting on the shambolic centralization of responses to the pandemic when local conditions required otherwise; failing to provide adequate PPE for staff in hospitals and care homes; not having enough staff to run the emergency Nightingale hospitals; returning elderly Covid-19 patients from hospitals to care homes without adequate testing; and awarding billions to Tory pals and donors in no-bid contracts.

BoJo has finally apologized for failings in England’s £12bn/$15.5bn test-and-trace system as contact-tracing numbers fell to a new low and waiting times for test results climbed to almost double the targeted deadlines.

The ever facile and disingenuous BoJo, having done everything to help his cronies cripple this system, said: “I share people’s frustrations and I understand totally why we do need to see faster turnaround times and we need to improve it”.

James Naismith, professor of structural biology at Oxford University, said of the figures:

“[They] show a system struggling to make any difference to the epidemic … The current system indicates that around two-thirds of infected people do not have contacts traced at all. Of the contacts provided, around 60% of the contacts are reached.

Of those that are reached, over 70% of them are in the same house as the positive case, so were unlikely to have needed the tracing system. Only half of all contacts that are actually traced are reached within 24 hours”.

None of his ministers seem to operate from the same script, so BoJo, a congenital bluffer with a fondness for phrases of cod Latin rather than being an adroit thinker, is tormented during press briefings by requests from journalists to reconcile his seat of the pants decision-making with the equally spur of the moment stances of his ministerial colleagues—the latter being just as incompetent as he is, if not more so.

Even the Tories are at odds with each other over BoJo’s highly confusing 3-tier lockdown system, designed to establish how “at risk” an area happens to be. The measures have been introduced to prevent the UK from undergoing another across-the-nation lockdown which would cause a complete closure of businesses and schools.

Tier 3 (Very high alert level): Household mixing will be banned; all pubs and bars will be closed

Tier 2 (High alert level): Covers most areas under current restrictions; people will not be able to mix with other households indoors

Tier 1 (Medium alert level): Covers most of England; it will feature current rules such as the rule of 6 (individuals) for meetings and 10pm closing time for pubs

There are suspicions that the system is being gamed to suit Tory strongholds— these areas seem to predominate among tiers 1 and 2, while many Labour areas have seen BoJo impose a tier 3 status on them without bothering to consult local leaders.

BoJo has said the criterion for assigning a tier to a particular area is provided by its R or Basic Reproduction Number. This is the expected number of cases directly generated by 1 case in a population where all individuals are susceptible to infection. For example, if a disease has an R number of 18, a person who has the disease will transmit it to an average of 18 other people.

Epidemiologists have long pointed out that using the R number can’t work without an adequate testing system. Even if it works, using the R number on its own won’t do the job of assigning a tier accurately.

Other factors are just as important, such as the capacity of local hospitals to deal with Covid cases regardless of the R number.

As is the case in the US, cities and large towns in the UK with their university, and other, hospitals, tend to be better resourced when it comes to medical care. Small towns in rural areas, with a single general hospital (say), are likely to struggle with even a small rise in the number of Covid cases requiring hospitalization.

BoJo also has no criteria for determining when an area is in a position to be moved down a tier, which is hardly surprising, given that his own medical and scientific advisers expressed no enthusiasm for BoJo’s “tracks of my tiers” system (tributes to Smokey Robinson and the brilliant cartoonist Martin Rowson for this).

The government’s chaotic lockdown regulations, riddled with loopholes, has led to a sharp drop in the number of those adhering to the rules.

The latest Opinium poll showed the proportion of 18-34-year-olds who admitted breaking the rules has increased from 10% to 17% in the last two weeks. The proportion of 35-44-year-olds increased even more sharply – from 10% to 18% over the same period.

BoJo got into an almighty tussle with Andy Burnham, the elected Labour mayor of Manchester.

Burnham is an ambitious and pugilistic Blairite who was an MP before becoming Manchester’s mayor in 2017. Prior to that he had been a member of the cabinet of Gordon Brown (Blair’s successor) until 2010. He ran unsuccessfully against Jeremy Corbyn for the party leadership in 2015. His tin-eared motto in his campaign against Corbyn: ““the entrepreneur will be as much our hero as the nurse”. Adopting a motto like this in a supposedly socialist party would sink any person’s chances of becoming its leader.

Burnham, now probably sensing an opportunity created by the milque-toast disposition of the (equally) Blairite Labour leader Keir Starmer in his dealings with the Tories, did the right thing by insisting on financial relief for the job losses ensuing from the pandemic’s second wave.

After well-publicized toing’s-and-froing’s with BoJo, Burnham ended-up receiving a paltry £65mn/$84mn so that less well-off Mancunians could continue to buy food and pay rent.

By comparison, last month BoJo was telling Brits he was going to spend £100bn/$130bn on the “Operation Moonshot” mass testing project, a sum conjured-up in a go-for-broke con to find a supposedly adequate test-and-trace system after failed attempts galore. Sentient Brits know that most of this money will find its way into the pockets of Tory cronies.

In comparison, the £65mn sought by Burnham for the inhabitants of Manchester amounts to a measly £0.065bn. But then simple arithmetic has never been BoJo’s strong point, and moreover, neoliberal governments such as the Tories operate these days in the realm of Enron-style postmodern accounting.

Cynics in the media suggest that Burnham should turn Manchester into a three-week old corporate outfit, with £300/$391 max in capital, and, pretending to be a Tory, make a pitch for a £100mn/$130.6mn no-bid contract to manufacture PPE (despite having no experience whatsoever in this business).

If others, i.e. totally unqualified Tory supporters, have succeeded fabulously with similar pitches, then why not the hypothetical “entrepreneur” Andy Burnham?

In a more serious vein, Burnham has at last found a cause that puts him on the side of the proverbial angels, and he’s become a key spokesperson not just for his metropolis, but the entire North of England.

This supposedly regional politician, at least for now, has achieved some kind of national prominence. Watch out Keir Starmer, and perhaps Boris Johnson. Someone could be finding a way to be the new sheriff in Westminster.

322 Tory MPs voted against a measure to extend free meals for the UK’s poorest children over the half-term and winter school holidays. Their votes killed the bill.

Millions face incapacitating financial hardship as a result of the pandemic, but the Tories decided to end a lifeline for the most vulnerable families.

It is estimated that 1.4 million children will go hungry this Christmas.

The Manchester United and England soccer star Marcus Rashford, a food poverty activist, has raised £20mn/$26.2mn to fund free school meals, and, backed by more than 2,000 pediatricians, pleaded with Tory MPs to extend the free meals programme to cover the winter period.

The Scrooge-like Tory parliamentary vote (one Tory MP, Ben Bradley, tweeted that free meals in his constituency ended-up in crack houses and brothels), left a poor taste in the mouths of party members, and some Tory local councils, including the one in BoJo’s own constituency, saved face by saying they would take over the funding of school meals for the Christmas period.

Hundreds of cafes, shops, and pubs heeded Rashford’s call to feed poor children.

Labour has just announced it will force another vote on free school meals if the government does not change course before the Christmas break.

Meanwhile the Tories continue to squander vast sums elsewhere.

BoJo still plans to spend £120mn/$155mn on the so-called “Festival of Brexit” in the new year. Historically, this could be the first time a UK government spends millions celebrating a palpable economic disaster for the country.

Earlier this month Downing Street confirmed that plans for a Scotland-Northern Ireland bridge across the Irish Sea are underway, BoJo saying the bridge would “only cost about £15bn/$20bn”. The sea beneath the potential route was used as a huge munitions dump during WW2, and experts have warned against constructing a bridge there.

In July, the government bought a stake worth £400mn/$522mn in the failed satellite firm OneWeb as part of a post-Brexit space strategy. Questions have been raised in parliament about awarding this deal to a bankrupt US company.

In something like a closing finger-flip at Marcus Rashford and his supporters, it was revealed that booze in the parliamentary bars is subsidized to the tune of £4.4mn/$6mn a year.

So cheers everyone, and even if you are destitute, have a jolly good time during the festive (sic) season!

After Covid: Will the Recession Become a Depression?

David Rosen

In April 2020, Jamie Dimond, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, noted in the company’s 2019 annual report: “As a nation, we were clearly not equipped for this global pandemic, and the consequences have been devastating.” Like a Wall Street preacher, he added, “But it is forcing us to work together, and it is improving civility and reminding us that we all live on one planet.”

In June, the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private forecasting group, reported that the “peak in quarterly economic activity occurred in 2019-Q4.” It noted:

The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in June 2009 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 128 months, the longest in the history of U.S. business cycles dating back to 1854. The previous record was held by the business expansion that lasted for 120 months from March 1991 to March 2001.

It then warned that a recession had begun in February 2020, just around the time the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic struck – and a month before Diamond warned about the “pandemic.” It reported:

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, normally visible in production, employment, and other indicators. A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of economic activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion.

Because a recession is a broad contraction of the economy, not confined to one sector, the committee emphasizes economy-wide indicators of economic activity. The committee believes that domestic production and employment are the primary conceptual measures of economic activity.

The unstated question at the heart of Diamond lamentation was whether his reference to a “pandemic” applied only to the virus or to the deeper economic and social crisis beginning to grip the country?

Grasping for straws, Pres. Trump tweeted on June 8^th: “Big day for Stock Market. Smart money, and the World, know that we are heading in the right direction. Jobs are coming back FAST. Next year will be our greatest ever.”

For Trump, ignorance is bliss whether confronting a virus or a stumbling economy.

***

On October 6^th, Jerome Powell, Chair, Federal Reserve, offered a very pessimistic assessment of the status of the economy in a presentation, Recent Economic Developments and the Challenges Ahead. He noted:

… a prolonged slowing in the pace of improvement over time could trigger typical recessionary dynamics, as weakness feeds on weakness. A long period of unnecessarily slow progress could continue to exacerbate existing disparities in our economy. That would be tragic, especially in light of our country’s progress on these issues in the years leading up to the pandemic.

He went on, despairing:

… Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses. Over time, household insolvencies and business bankruptcies would rise, harming the productive capacity of the economy, and holding back wage growth.

Drilling another nail in the proverbial economic coffin, Pres. Trump initially pulled the plug on the on-again/off-again negotiations between Sec. of the Treasure Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over a new economic aid package to respond to the coronavirus. Pelosi had initially proposed a $3 trillion bailout plan but then reduced it to $1 trillion hoping to push through a compromise by the November 3^rd election.

Trump tweeted:

We made a very generous offer of $1.6 Trillion Dollars and, as usual, she is not negotiating in good faith. I am rejecting their …

.. request, and looking to the future of our Country. I have instructed my representatives to stop negotiating until after the election when, immediately after I win, we will pass a major Stimulus Bill that focuses on hardworking Americans and Small Business. …

The outcome of the failure to even provide band-aide relief for the growing numbers of Americans suffering from the combined pandemic and recession would be a long, cold winter.

In the face of Powell’s report and mounting criticism, including from Republicans, Trump executed a backflip and tweeting the following:

If I am sent a Stand Alone Bill for Stimulus Checks ($1,200), they will go out to our great people IMMEDIATELY. I am ready to sign right now. Are you listening Nancy?

Sadly, even if the political dance is resolved and a follow-up recovery plan is implemented, the long-term economic consequences of Covid-19 pandemic cannot be fully anticipated. A recent study by two Harvard economists paint a grim picture of total costs of the pandemic. “The total cost is estimated at more than $16 trillion, or approximately 90% of the annual gross domestic product of the US,” David Cutler and Lawrence Summers wrote. “Approximately half of this amount is the lost income from the COVID-19–induced recession; the remainder is the economic effects of shorter and less healthy life.”

And so, the ping-pong of American politics plays on.

***

Six months earlier, on April 27, 2020, Trump stood near a sign that read “Opening up America again” and announced his plan to reopen the nation’s economy in the face of the mounting coronavirus epidemic. “Every day it gets better,” he proclaimed. “We are continuing to rapidly expand our capacity and confident that we have enough testing to begin reopening and the reopening process. We want to get our country open. And the testing is not going to be a problem at all. In fact it’s going to be one of the great assets that we have.”

At the time Trump made his proclamation, the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 was near 1 million and about 55,000 people had died. Now, in mid-October, confirmed coronavirus cases are at 8.1 million and 219,000 people have died. Efforts promoted by both the Trump administration and nearly all the states to “open up” the economy have proven not only less than successful economically but disastrous in terms of the pandemic’s spreading.

Nevertheless, the White House, along with thinktanks, news organizations and state governments, have joined a growing chorus offering analyses and plans to illuminate post-pandemic possibilities. The White House’s March 2020 Executive Order, “Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic: Response and Recovery Through Federal-State-Local-Tribal Partnership,” laid out its arms-length strategy: “Response and recovery efforts are locally executed, state managed, and federally supported.”

Reuters warned, “A month into efforts to broadly reopen the U.S. economy there is little clarity either on the pace and durability of the recovery ….” Scholars at the Brookings Institute laid out a half-dozen scenarios dubbed “the shape of the recovery: Z-shaped, V-shaped, U-shaped, W-shaped, L-shaped, and even the Nike Swoosh.” However, the authors warned, “So, there will likely be no quick recovery. A key question is whether damage to the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services will be long lasting.”

The management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, cautioned: “Recovery from a deep crisis can be uneven, and history suggests that leaders may want to pace their policies over several years.” It poses a series of revealing questions:

Will your city be known for its unparalleled business environment for small and medium-size businesses looking to digitize and expand? Can your state become a top tourist destination? Or will workers in your locality be so successfully reskilled that it will lead the way toward inclusive growth?

It concluded, “The answer to these questions will determine the shape of the ‘next normal.’”

What if the various speculations as to the possible Covid-19 recovery lead to something other than a next normal? What if recovery portends a deeper, sadder possibility?

***

The unasked question is scary if simple: What if, after the coronavirus pandemic is contained, the economy takes much longer to recover, and social stagnation drags on? What if the recovery is a not a stepping-stone forward to a promising “next normal” but a step backward? What if America’s great ideological glue – the belief in opportunity – is frozen into a postmodern system of social relations with ever-decreasing economic mobility, one of deepening inequality?

The modern system of social inequality was forged during the Gilded Age of the late-19^th century. In 1897, the richest 4,000 families in the U.S. — who representing less than 1 percent of the population — had about as much wealth as the other 11.6 million families all together. In comparison, by November 2017, the top 1 percent held 38.6 percent of the nation’s wealth. Today, deepening inequality is recasting the lives of ordinary Americans fostering what historian David Huyssen identifies as the “Second Gilded Age.”

In a telling study published in the Review of Political Economy, “The Financial Crisis of 1929 Reexamined: The Role of Soaring Inequality,” Jon D. Wisman argued that “the Great Depression can be understood as the result of wage stagnation and exploding inequality during the 1920s.”

Wisman identified three factors that contributed to the Depression’s duration. First, consumption declined leading to “a fall in household saving, and increased household indebtedness.” Second, “greater inequality” led to “reduced household saving, greater household debt, and possibly longer work hours.” And, third, “as the rich took larger shares of income and wealth, they gained relatively more command over everything, including ideology.”

Symptoms of an economic and social crisis are mounting. As of August, the unemployment rate was at 8.4 percent, while far less than the 14.7 percent in April when Covid-19 first took its toll, it is double the 4.4 percent in February. Homeless is increasing; HUD reports that as of January 2019 the national homeless level reached 567,715 people and some project that, by January 2021, could increase by 40-45 percent possibly reaching 800,000 due sustained unemployment and the coming wave of evictions.

These factors are compounded by the burden of debt; the Federal Reserve of New York estimates that total household debt for the first quarter of 2020 hit $14.3 trillion, up from $12.7 trillion in the third quarter of 2008. Personal debt includes (i) household mortgages and (ii) non-housing debt (e.g., student debt, auto loans, credit cards). Deepening despair is leading alcohol abuse, drug overdoses and increases suicides. Sadly, the lifespan of the average American is declining, and the death rate is increasing.

In a 2016 publication, “What We Know About Economic Inequality and Social Mobility in the United States,” the Russell Sage Foundation (RSF) identifies some of the profound changes that, over the last half-century, have eroded notions of the American Dream. It concludes on a very pessimistic note:

The rise in economic inequality over the past four decades calls into question the notion that anyone, regardless of the status of their parents, can achieve the American Dream. Recent studies imply that America is a less mobile society than in the past and confirm that the U.S. has less social mobility than comparable industrialized nations.

What if ever-deepening economic inequality comes to define the New Gilded Age?

This possibility is anticipated by Harvard’s Raj Chetty, of the Opportunities Insights group, who recently wrote, “our research shows that children’s chances of earning more than their parents have been declining. 90% of children born in 1940 grew up to earn more than their parents.” He concludes, “Today, only half of all children earn more than their parents did.”

No one knows when Covid-19 will finally be contained. One consensus suggests that a proven vaccine will likely be available and dispensed in the U.S. by the end of 2021. Moody’s Sophia Koropeckyj estimates that 5 million people will struggle to find work even after the virus has been controlled and that the recovery from the current recession, the “new normal,” won’t happen until 2023 or 2024.

More ominous, a greater economically structured and unequal system – a postmodern caste system — may come to define the next new normal. No matter whether Trump or Biden is elected the next president, a far deeper crisis may await the nation. As is becoming increasingly evident, only a truly popular and democratic social restructuring of the economy and the political order can address the structural crisis the nation faces.

Ensuring Mental Health For All

Moin Qazi

Among the many challenges India faces, the most underappreciated is the ongoing mental health crisis. Mental illness is actually India’s ticking bomb. An estimated 56 million Indians suffer from depression, and 38 million from anxiety disorders. For those who suffer from mental illness, life can seem like a terrible prison from which there is no hope of escape; they are left forlorn and abandoned, stigmatized, shunned and misunderstood.

The intensity of mental disorders is particularly worrying in adolescents. Half of all mental illness starts by the age of 14, but most cases go undetected and untreated. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds in India.

India has 197.3 million people who live with a diagnosable mental disorder, today. 45 million have depression and roughly the same number live with anxiety. About 10 million people live with severe mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorders and schizophrenia.

The pathetic state of mental healthcare in the country coupled with the government’s apathy is a cause of great concern. A plausible reason is the sheer scale of the problem. Hence, nobody wants to discuss the elephant in the room. However, the nation cannot afford to ignore the stark reality.

There are only 43 mental hospitals in the country, and most of them are in disarray. Six states, mainly in the northern and eastern regions with a combined population of 56 million people, do not have a single mental hospital. Most government-run mental hospitals lack essential infrastructure, treatment facilities and have a sickening ambience. Visiting private clinics and sustaining the treatment, which is usually a long drawn-out affair, is an expensive proposition for most families.

Most government-run hospitals do not have psychiatric drugs, and visiting a private counselor and sustaining the treatment—usually a long drawn out affair—is an expensive proposition for most families. The ignorance and the callous attitude of the government towards psychiatric ailments, coupled with social stigma, dissuade most from seeking help. These factors are compounded by the existing treatment services. India has 0.3 psychiatrists and two mental health workers for every 100,000 individuals.

With resources tight an effective method for successfully tackling mental illness is a major expansion of online psychiatric resources such as virtual clinics and web-based psychotherapies. The economic consequences of poor mental health are quite significant. The cognitive symptoms of depression like difficulties in concentrating, making decisions and remembering cause significant impairment in work function and productivity.

The fact is that poor mental health is just as bad as or maybe even worse than any kind of physical injury. Left untreated, it can lead to debilitating, life-altering conditions. Medical science has progressed enough to be able to cure, or at least control, most mental-health problems with a combination of drugs, therapy and community support. Individuals can lead fulfilling and productive lives while performing day-to-day activities such as going to school, raising a family and pursuing a career.

People living with a mental illness face many impediments to their recovery and restoration to full functioning. Social determinants such as poverty, gender and education interplay with the deep-rooted stigma associated to any form of mental ill health.   The lack of recognition of mental ill health propels families to seek support from a range of stakeholders before they reach professional care. Many valuable years of intervention time are lost in the process.

Although mental illness is experienced by a significant portion of the population, it is still seen as a taboo. Depression is so deeply stigmatised that people adopt enforced silence and social isolation. In villages, there are dreadful recorded cases of patients being locked up in homes during the day, being tied to trees or even being flogged to exorcise evil spirits. Stories of extreme barbarity abound in tribal cultures. In some societies, family honour is so paramount that the notion of seeking psychiatric help more regularly is anathema. Recognition and acknowledgement, rather than denial and ignorance, are the need of the hour.

Many a time, mental health problems are either looked down upon or trivialised. These man-made barriers deprive people of their dignity. We need to shift the paradigm of how we view and address mental illness at a systemic level. Tragically, support networks for the mentally ill as well as their caregivers are woefully inadequate. There is an urgent need for an ambience of empathy, awareness and acceptance of these people so that prejudices dissipate and patients are able to overcome the stigma and shame.

To make dignity in mental health a reality, it requires every member of society to work and take action together. In an effort to curb mental illness and create a congenial environment to address the mental well-being of the public, the Government of India repealed the archaic Mental Health Act 1987 passed the Mental HealthcareAct, 2016. Along with the promise to provide an international standard of care, the bill seeks to address the underlying social stigma and taboo attached to mental diseases.

India’s Mental Healthcare Act is a piece of very progressive legislation, and is the equivalent of a bill of rights for people with mental disorders. Fundamentally, the Act treats mental disorders on the same plane as physical health problems thus stripping them of all stigmatizations. Mental health issues get the same priority as physical disorders. Conceptually, the Act transforms the focus of mental health legislations from supposedly protecting society and families by relegating people with mental disorders to the status of second-class citizens, to emphasizing the provision of affordable and quality care, financed by the government, through the primary care system.

Modern medicine is a quest to understand pathogenesis, the biological cause of an illness. Once pathogenesis—the word comes from the Greek pathos (suffering) and genesis (origin)—has been established, accurate diagnoses can be made, and targeted therapies developed. But what can medicine do when pathogenesis remains elusive? That’s a question that has bedeviled the field of psychiatry for so long.  Although our understanding of the brain is more sophisticated than ever before, psychiatry remains an empirical discipline, its practitioners are dependent on their (and their colleagues’) experience to figure out what will be an effective therapy for puzzling human behaviors.

Although psychiatry has yet to find the pathogenesis of most mental illness, it offers medical treatment on the basis of case histories recorded and documented by practitioners form their own professional experiences. The psychiatry protocols of diagnosis and treatment have been   extensively refined and have made life for mentally distressed people more tolerable and bearable. Many people have been helped, and the stigma both of severe mental illness and of fleeting depressive episodes has been vastly reduced.

The search for pathogenesis in psychiatry still continues. Genetic analysis may one day provide insight into the causes of schizophrenia, although it would likely take years for therapies to be developed. A positive hope comes from collaboration and convergence that is taking place in the mental health ecosphere. This is guided by genuine empathy in the society for the plight of the mentally afflicted. Academics, psychoanalysts, psychologists, practitioners and potential patients have greater understanding than ever about the range of treatments available.

It is time psychiatry becomes more modest about its potential and trains its attention on the severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, that are currently treated largely in prisons and asylums .The biology of mental illness continues to be  a mystery, but practitioners don’t want to admit it. Psychiatrists will have to pair their skills with people from social sciences and even the humanities. We need to explore avenues other than medication to create humane and effective long-term asylum treatment.

Mental healthcare initiatives are presently focused on a narrow biomedical approach that tends to ignore socio-cultural contexts. Community mental health services can offer a mix of clinical, psychological and social services to people with severe, moderate and mild mental illnesses. Also, counselling can make a profound difference and build resilience to cope with despair. Providing psycho-education to the patients’ families can also help. Unfortunately, in recent decades, academic psychologists have largely forsaken psychoanalysis and made themselves over as biologists. There is a need for strengthening the cadre of behavioural health therapists.

We need mental health practices that respect the dignity and agency of the distressed. Prevention must begin with people being made aware of the early warning signs and symptoms of mental illness. Parents and teachers can help build life skills of children and adolescents to help them cope with everyday challenges at home and at school. Psychosocial support can be provided in schools and other community settings.

Training for health workers to enable them to detect and manage mental health disorders can be put in place, improved or expanded. Such programmes should also cover peers, parents and teachers so that they know how to support their friends, children and students in overcoming mental stress and neurotic problems. There is a need for more open discussion and dialogue on this subject with the general public, and not just experts. This can help create a more inclusive environment for people with mental illness. There is also a need to effect more change on ground through infusion of fresh funds and investments which, currently, stands at 0.05 per cent of the total Budget allocated to health, annually.

With simple yet effective steps, we can turn the situation around and build a more accommodating environment for those struggling with mental distress and expand access to mental health and psychosocial services.

Prospect of right-wing violence and police repression hangs over US election

Eric London

With one week remaining until the US election on November 3, additional details are emerging of right-wing plans for election day violence and police preparations for repressing protests on election night.

In a motion filed yesterday in the federal case against six of the 14 fascists who plotted to kidnap and kill Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, prosecutors highlighted the timing of the plot: “On multiple occasions,” the plotters stated to one another “that the group’s deadline for executing the plot was the November 3, 2020 national election.”

The motion asks for a delay in the case so that prosecution can “determine whether additional federal charges are appropriate” because investigators found “explosive device components” which indicate a wider plot. “Because of the imminent nature of the threat, law enforcement was obliged to arrest the subjects before this evidence could be processed,” the motion reads.

Over the weekend, Jackson County Judge Michael Klaeren reduced bail for conspirator Peter Musico from $10 million to $100,000, equivalent to a relatively minor felony. Klaeren, who was appointed to his position by then-Governor Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, called the original bond “grossly excessive” and rejected a request by the prosecution to confine Musico to his home, saying this would make it difficult for Musico to go to work. Musico, a founding member of the Wolverine Watchmen, gave a thumbs up and thanked the judge.

A right-wing protester carries his rifle at the State Capitol in Lansing, Michigan in an April 30 demonstration against Whitmer [Credit: AP Photo/Paul Sancya]

Last Friday, reports surfaced that a similar plot, led by an individual active within the Ohio Republican Party, was underway against that state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine. But despite credible reports that Renea Turner planned to kidnap DeWine from his Cedarville home and place him on trial to kill or “exile” him, police have not filed charges. A report from WHIO notes, “[S]tate troopers told News Center 7 they opened an investigation, but declined to comment further.”

On Monday afternoon, Turner was allowed to hold a press conference at the state capitol building where she denied plans to kill DeWine but claimed that 85 percent of Ohioans “want him [DeWine] removed,” adding, “let’s say 5 percent of that 85 percent are skilled marksmen.”

Across the country, police departments are also preparing for election day.

In Michigan, statewide organizations representing police and sheriffs continue to refuse to abide by state elected officials’ order barring weapons at polling places—a clear nod to militia groups in the state.

In New Hampshire, officials announced they would not attempt to keep voters from bringing weapons to the polls. Further anecdotes indicate the police are becoming more brazen about their support for Trump in the days before the election, encouraged by the president’s own statements.

A police officer in New York City used his patrol car’s megaphone to broadcast pro-Trump messages to Flatbush residents this weekend. In Florida, a uniformed officer arrived at a polling station last week with a mask that said “Trump.” Eleven people were arrested in New York City Sunday when Trump supporters and protestors began fighting. Police guarded the pro-Trump demonstration and manhandled several anti-Trump protestors.

Beginning Monday, the New York Police Department deployed thousands of cops to patrol over 1,200 polling locations, with the chief explaining that the force is “at the ready” for the prospect of protests. In Washington D.C., police have purchased over $100,000 in additional tear gas canisters. Buzzfeed News reported that Police Chief Peter Newsham “told local lawmakers that in law enforcement circles, ‘it is widely believed there will be civil unrest after the November election regardless of who wins.’”

King County, Washington will also deploy guards at ballot boxes. The chief of police in Chicago referenced election demonstrations in the context of anti-police protests in the city earlier this summer. He said: "We have operations in place to ensure that they don’t destroy property, that they don’t cause further violence and that they are held accountable.”

In New Jersey, 250 members of the state National Guard will process ballots at the county level, though they will do so in civilian clothes. Several dozen guard soldiers will help with “cybersecurity” in North Carolina, while the Washington Post reported that states like Kentucky, Nebraska and Wisconsin are also considering deploying the Guard on election day.

These deployments show that a substantial police and National Guard presence will be on the ground on election night, when the likelihood of large anti-Trump demonstrations is high.

In four battleground states, mail-in ballots cannot be counted before election day. These states are also the linchpin of Trump’s strategy to proclaim “fraud” and challenge results: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa. In these states, large majorities of mail-in ballots come from Democrats, meaning Trump is likely to jump to an early lead on election night as ballots from election-day voters, who are expected to be mostly Republicans, are counted first. On Monday, the US Supreme Court rejected an effort by Democrats to begin counting mail-in ballots in advance of election day. 

This lead will erode in the days following the election, giving Trump the opportunity to baselessly claim the election is being stolen from him. Trump may claim victory if early counts show him leading in these states, provoking mass demonstrations and counter-mobilizations by fascist groups that support the president.

Police and national security officials are “gaming” plans to crush demonstrations against Trump. In a report published by the right-wing Claremont Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation, a network of high-level former national security officials and police leaders write, “There is an increased chance of urban unrest, especially in jurisdictions where local and state officials are reluctant to maintain order.”

The report “games” the prospect of large-scale social mobilizations and predicts a massive police crackdown.

The report says that in the early morning hours of November 4, the day after the election, police will conduct widespread raids on the homes of left-wing opponents of Trump, suggesting there will be “over one thousand arrest warrants issued using federal and state statutes from RICO to disorderly conduct with coordinated pre-dawn warrant executions nationwide. The decision to obtain arrest warrants even for the barest minimum of probable cause on the lowest of charges is meant to remove the players from the picture, at least temporarily.”

The report predicts that police departments will rebel against Democratic elected officials in cities like Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles and New York as police suppress protests, and that officers assigned to guard Democratic mayors will call in sick, abandoning their posts.

The report also references the likelihood of police mobilizing fascist vigilantes: “Riot control efforts continue throughout the country. There are rumors that several sheriffs in conservative counties throughout the country are hinting that they may deputize regular citizens into posses should the lawlessness come to their counties. Social media is ablaze with volunteers from Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers and other Posse Comitatus groups to form posses.”

This is the scenario for which the extreme right is preparing. As Trump moves forward with his right-wing strategy and threatens violence against sitting governors in his stump speeches, the Democratic Party responds with meaningless appeals for “calm.” Its greatest fear is that opposition to Trump and his attempt to steal the election will develop into a mass movement outside its control.

The MAS victory in Bolivia and bourgeois nationalism’s betrayals in Latin America

Tomas Castanheira

Last Friday, Bolivia’s Supreme Electoral Court officially declared the first round victory of Luis Arce of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in the presidential elections held on October 18. Arce will take office on November 8, one year after former MAS president Evo Morales was overthrown in a US-backed military coup.

The coup regime led by self-proclaimed President Jeanine Áñez had already recognized Arce’s sweeping victory, even though before the elections she declared that a win for MAS would mean “the return of the dictatorship,” and had mobilized military forces to prepare for a possible new electoral coup.

The ultra-right presidential candidate, Luis Fernando Camacho, who maintained for a few days that he would not take the same “cowardly” attitude as Áñez, ended up recognizing Arce as president on Friday. The Santa Cruz Civic Committee, a fascistic organization connected to Camacho, saw itself isolated in its denunciation of a supposed electoral fraud. In turn, the Civic Committee dissociated itself from the call for a 48-hour strike for the annulment of the elections, which was weakly carried out only by the “shock group” Crucenista Youth Union (UJC).

MAS president-elect Luis Arce (r) with running mate David Choquehuanca (Credit: Facebook)

The return of the MAS to power in Bolivia is being celebrated by its Latin American counterparts, the demoralized bourgeois nationalist parties that led the so-called “Pink Tide” governments of the 2000s, as a political turning point in the region.

In Brazil, statements of this character were issued by several leaders of the Workers Party (PT), which governed the region’s largest country from 2002 to 2016, when President Dilma Rousseff was overthrown through an impeachment based on trumped-up charges.

The PT’s iconic figure, former president Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva, declared on Twitter: “May Bolivia return to the path of development with inclusion and sovereignty.” His successor, Rousseff, wrote in Spanish: “May this victory inspire the peoples of our continent who suffer under neoliberal and authoritarian regimes.”

The national president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, witnessed the Bolivian electoral process as an international observer and concluded that “there were no relevant incidents,” despite reporting a massive presence of the Armed Forces in the streets, which she justified as “a bit of a tradition here.”

In Venezuela and Cuba, countries with which the Áñez regime cut off official relations, the MAS victory was celebrated by the heirs of Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro. Chavista President Nicolás Maduro exclaimed: “Great Victory! The Bolivian people, united and conscious, defeated the coup d’état that was carried out against our brother Evo.” Arce has already declared that he will immediately reestablish relations with both countries.

The Peronist Alberto Fernandez, president of Argentina, where Evo Morales has been in exile since December, declared that the victory of the MAS “is good news for those of us who defend democracy in Latin America.” Morales said that Fernandez “offered to personally take me to Bolivia,” a return that he is said to be scheduling with Arce for as early as next weekend.

The former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption, and Fernando Lugo, president of Paraguay overthrown by a coup in 2012, also celebrated the victory. Lugo declared: “This enormous triumph is a beacon of example and hope for all of our America!”

However, what these political forces seek to characterize as the return of democracy, of policies to reduce social inequality and even a new era of economic prosperity, contrasts with the real situation of extreme instability in the country.

Áñez will hand over to the MAS the presidency of a country riven by class struggle. The rebellious protests that have shaken Bolivia over the past few months, and even the overwhelming vote for the MAS against the right-wing candidates who supported the coup, have expressed the hatred of the workers and peasants for the repressive and illegitimate regime.

But the fundamental reasons for these social conflicts lie in the repudiation by the Bolivian masses of the conditions of deepening misery, which, contrary to what the MAS and its supporters affirm, were not resolved by the “economic miracle” under the Morales government. The final period of his presidency was confronted by growing social struggles and strikes by the working class, whose demands were denied by the government, and were answered with state repression.

The program of the new MAS administration will be centered on the promotion of “pacification throughout the country” and the construction of a “national unity government,” in the words of President-elect Luis Arce himself. That is, it will work for the suppression of class struggle and conciliation with the fascist sections of the Bolivian bourgeoisie that overthrew Morales in the first place.

In a long interview broadcast on Saturday by Piedra Papel y Tinta, Arce clearly expressed the reactionary content of his capitalist policies. With a nationalist rhetoric of “reactivating the economy” based on “import substitution,” he defended the attacks promoted by the bourgeois governments against the working class throughout the world.

Asked if, in the face of challenges like “the pandemic, the crisis, the relationship with Brazil,” he considered implementing economic “shock measures,” Arce answered: “No, the correct measures.” The “correct measures” defended by Arce chillingly resemble the brutal policies promoted by Brazil’s fascist President Jair Bolsonaro against the working class of this neighboring country.

Quoting a World Bank report on the pandemic, Arce said: “Bolivia is the country that has most strictly followed a quarantine and everything else. In other countries there was a balance. The health issue is important, but there was also flexibility with the economic issue, so that the fall would not be so hard.”

Arce attacked the government of Áñez, not for imposing violent starvation policies against the Bolivian masses, but for having “prioritized health over economy.” “On the other hand,” he said, “other countries, like Peru and even Brazil ... were more flexible from an economic point of view, so that the impact would not be so strong on the economy. And they were successful.”

The criminal governments of Brazil and Peru, chosen as models by Arce, succeeded exclusively in obtaining the most devastating results of the pandemic.

Peru is the country with the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate in the world. Brazil, with almost 160,000 victims of the disease, has the second highest death toll on the planet. The working classes of both countries are suffering from an extreme increase in unemployment and a drastic lowering of living conditions.

As advocates of the interests of the Bolivian capitalist class, the MAS is incapable of promoting progressive politics. Last year’s military coup was a political reaction of this social class to the profound contradictions that undermine its rule over society, driven by the global crisis of capitalism and the growth of imperialist pressures on the Latin American region.

These crisis conditions have only intensified over the past year, marked by the impact of the global pandemic. These developments will necessarily produce new and greater explosions of the class struggle, which will be desperately fought by the new MAS government, while the fascistic forces prepare for new dictatorial assaults.

The fundamental problems of the Latin American working masses—state violence, misery, and imperialist oppression—cannot be addressed by supporting any party of the national bourgeoisie, no matter how “left” its pretensions. The working class must relentlessly fight these bourgeois nationalist forces and all their apologists among the pseudo-left.

Expressing the social interests of the upper-middle class, which seeks the stability of capitalist rule, the Morenoites of the so-called Trotskyist Fraction (FT-CI) argued, like countless other groups of the same character, that the MAS victory in Bolivia represents a “setback for Bolsonaro and the continental right,” in the words of their Argentine parliamentary leader Nicolás Del Caño.

A featured article on their website, La Izquierda Diario , celebrating the “defeat of the coup plotters in Bolivia” stated: “This defeat of the continental right could be extended if, as everything indicates, Trump loses the elections on November 3.”

They follow their support for the MAS in Bolivia to the logical conclusion that the interests of the Latin American working class are bound up with a victory by Joe Biden in next week’s US elections, replacing one capitalist party with another at the helm of US imperialism.

Never mind that Biden as a senator was one of the architects of Plan Colombia, the police-military operation that claimed the lives of thousands of Colombians and displaced hundreds of thousands. Nor that he was vice president in an administration that orchestrated a coup, very much like the one in Bolivia, a decade earlier in Honduras, with the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. This same Democratic administration introduced the punishing sanctions regime against Venezuela and earned for its head, Barack Obama, the title “deporter in chief.”

That the Morenoites are effectively supporting the election of such a veteran imperialist politician as a means of defeating “the continental right” makes it clear that they have nothing whatsoever to do with the struggle for socialism.