Germany’s Left Party in free fall

Peter Schwarz

The Left Party is in free fall. Since March last year, it has lost massively in seven consecutive state elections. In western Germany, it is now only represented in the state parliaments of the city-states of Hamburg and Bremen and the more sparsely populated state of Hesse.

In the federal elections last September, the vote for the Left Party fell from 9.2 to 4.9 percent (below the 5 percent hurdle for a party slate) and it only managed to return to parliament thanks to winning three individual mandates. In Saarland, it plummeted from 12.8 to 2.6 percent at the end of March. In North Rhine-Westphalia, it lost two-thirds of its voters last Sunday, falling well short of entering the state parliament with 2.1 percent. Among workers, only one percent voted for the Left Party, although the Social Democratic Party (SPD) also achieved its historically worst result.

The Left Party leadership at the Luxemburg-Liebknecht Memorial Day 2022: Federal Executive Director Jörg Schindler, Chairwoman Janine Wissler, Parliamentary Group Chairwoman Amira Mohamed Ali and Dietmar Bartsch (Photo: Die Linke/Martin Heinlein/CC-BY 2.0)

The decline of the Left Party is good news. Its claim to represent left-wing or even socialist politics has always been a fraud. Since it emerged from the Stalinist state party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, formerly East Germany) in 1990 under the name Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), it has professed unreserved support for capitalism and sought to block and stifle any expression of social and political opposition.

In doing so, it worked closely with the trade unions and—since the founding of the Left Party in 2007—with renegade social democrats led by the former Saarland prime minister, SPD leader and federal finance minister Oskar Lafontaine. Wherever it has had the opportunity to put its policies into practice, it has proved to be as anti-social, ruthless and pro-capitalist as all the other bourgeois parties.

Its role in the “Red-Red” (SPD-Left Party) Berlin Senate (state executive) from 2002 to 2011 is notorious. While the SPD and Greens pushed through the Agenda 2010 and Hartz laws—welfare and labour “reforms”—at the federal level, the SPD and PDS/Left Party in Berlin destroyed a third of public sector jobs, cut wages and social benefits, privatised hospitals and sold off 150,000 publicly owned apartments to property sharks. The Left Party's government record in other federal states is similar.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the party has found it increasingly difficult to reconcile its left-wing rhetoric with its right-wing policies. The banks and the rich were 'rescued' with billions of euros, while the working class had to foot the bill in the form of falling wages, social cuts and dilapidated schools and hospitals. The Left Party supported all these policies.

In 2009, the party achieved its best federal election result with just under 12 percent. Since then, with occasional fluctuations, it has only gone downhill. Its number of voters and members declined, internal quarrels increased.

One wing, led by Katja Kipping and the pseudo-left Marx 21 (aligned with the Socialist Workers Party in Britain), turned to identity politics and other hobbyhorses of the affluent urban upper middle class. Another, personified by Sahra Wagenknecht, competed with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on nationalism and xenophobia. Still others, personified by Dietmar Bartsch, leader of the parliamentary group in the Bundestag (federal parliament), and Bodo Ramelow, prime minister of Thuringia, were interested above all in retaining power and sought the closest possible proximity to the SPD and Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Support for the Ukraine war

The war in Ukraine has now finally exposed the pro-imperialist character of the Left Party. Its founder Gregor Gysi originally even wanted to support the federal government's €100 billion rearmaments programme, but was unable to get his way, for the time being. Parliamentary faction leader Bartsch attacked the “traffic light coalition” of the SPD, Liberal Democrats (FDP) and Greens in the Bundestag from the right, accusing it of failing to enforce sanctions against Russian oligarchs.

On the eve of the North Rhine-Westphalia state elections, federal party leader Jörg Schindler angrily attacked an upcoming event that was mildly critical of NATO. Asked by the moderator of broadcaster ZDF’s 'Berliner Runde' programme about the 'Living without NATO—Ideas for Peace' congress, in which pacifists and bourgeois journalists as well as some members of the Left Party will participate, Schindler indignantly distanced himself from it.

'I can explicitly say that this is not the position of our party,' he stressed. 'Our party has a clear position on the issue of the Ukraine war. We criticise and condemn Putin's war of aggression. It is as simple as that, and there is nothing else to say.'

The statement calling for the congress, which takes place in Berlin on May 21, explicitly calls Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine 'contrary to international law.” All it advocates is a negotiated settlement and 'compromises without loss of face for either side.”

The Left Party has convened a party congress in Erfurt for June 24 to elect a new leadership and—in the name of overcoming the “self-destructive processes and substantive blockades”—to pledge the party to NATO’s war course. To this end, the party executive has submitted a lead motion which completely supports NATO propaganda.

For years, Russia had “been pursuing a policy aimed at keeping the post-Soviet states under Russia's influence: By attempting to establish authoritarian vassal regimes or, where that fails, to destabilise the states,” it reads.

Russia was “one of the geostrategic power centres in fossilised capitalism, in which different actors fight for access to resources and spheres of influence, also by means of war.” The country pursued “an imperialist policy” which was “legitimised vis-à-vis its own population by a nationalist, militarist and autocratic great power ideology.”

The systematic expansion of NATO towards Russia and the coup in Ukraine supported by the US and Germany, which brought a pro-Western regime to power in 2014 with the help of right-wing militias and laid the seeds for the current war, are not mentioned, let alone condemned, in the lead motion.

Instead, the Executive Committee exercises self-criticism. 'After the end of the Cold War, the Western states, with their overwhelming economic and military power and NATO, have often (see the Kosovo or Iraq wars) disregarded institutions such as the UN and international law,' it says in the lead motion. This had been the focus of the Left Party's criticism. “Too little attention was paid to imperial wars beyond NATO, such as Russia's military interventions in Chechnya and Syria.”

The motion supports economic warfare against Russia, which is a central part of the NATO offensive. Victory over Russia is not to be achieved through arms deliveries, but through tightening sanctions: “Sanctions must be directed against the economic power base of the Putin system, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. The German government must fulfil its responsibility to freeze these assets of Russian oligarchs in the national and European framework.”

In fact, the sanctions and the rearmament of Ukraine—the US alone has approved $53 billion in military aid since the war began—serve the same goal: to inflict a crushing defeat on Russia and create the conditions for its disintegration and submission to the imperialist powers.

The US media speak this openly. The Washington Post, for example, recently condemned the—supposed—efforts of France, Germany and Italy to end the bloodshed through a ceasefire. “The risks of reducing pressure on Mr. Putin before he is thoroughly defeated, and perhaps not even then,” were too high, it says. The desire of Paris, Berlin and Rome “to shorten this destructive war—and thus limit the damage both to Ukraine and to their own badly battered economies,” should not stand in the way of that goal, it continues.

In other words, to “thoroughly defeat Putin” and subdue Russia, NATO is prepared to bleed Ukraine dry in a months-long war and risk a nuclear third world war.

Pacifist phrases

But it would not be the Left Party if it did not try to cover up its support for imperialist war policy with moral appeals and calls for peace addressed to the imperialist powers and institutions responsible for the war.

With a raised finger, the lead motion warns NATO that its attempts to “install a 'new world order” had “failed many times, often with disastrous consequences.” The “spiral of worldwide rearmament and the use of war as a means of enforcing hegemonic interests” was “dangerous as hell.” The motion calls for “a global peace order involving all actors,” to be achieved, among other things, by strengthening the International Criminal Court and the UN.

What a bankrupt perspective! Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union 30 years ago, the US has been waging war almost continuously with the declared aim of defending its position as the “sole world power” and preventing the rise of China. In the process, it and its NATO allies have destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, as well as numerous other countries, and militarily surrounded Russia.

German imperialism reacts to all this by returning to a great power policy itself and fervently rearming. The Left Party supports this policy while blathering about a new “peace order” in the manner of a priest blessing the cannons while quoting the Sermon on the Mount.

Fortunately, more and more people are seeing through this deception, as the decline of the vote for the Left Party shows. The only way to stop the Ukraine war and prevent a nuclear catastrophe is through an independent movement of the international working class, which is being forced to bear the brunt of militarism.

This does not mean support for Putin and his regime. On the contrary, Putin's reaction to NATO’s encirclement of Russia is as short-sighted as it is reactionary and plays into the hands of NATO. It is the response of a regime of oligarchs who have plundered the social property of the Soviet Union and are irreconcilably opposed to the working class.

The overthrow of Putin is the task of the Russian working class. The same applies to the right-wing regime and the working class of Ukraine. The Russian and Ukrainian workers need the support and solidarity of workers throughout Europe, the USA, and the whole world in this.

The objective conditions for such a movement are developing rapidly. All over the world, workers are rebelling against the social consequences of the war and the capitalist crisis: inflation, hunger, job losses and growing exploitation--a movement that is increasingly taking open forms against capitalist rule.

UK: Johnson government calls for slashing 90,000 civil service jobs

Paul Bond

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signaled massively stepped-up austerity measures, calling for 90,000 civil service jobs to be cut.

He made the call to cabinet colleagues last week, before outlining his plans to the Daily Mail. The head of one department later apologised to staff that they had learned of the jobs massacre “from the media rather than from me or civil service leaders.” 

Johnson has tasked cabinet ministers with reducing civil service staffing by one fifth. There are currently 475,000 full-time employees of the civil service across the country. Cabinet ministers have been given one month to submit proposals for their own departments, with two years for implementation. No announcements have yet been made about which departments will face the heaviest losses. 

The “civil service” covers every aspect of public service and government policy support, including welfare benefits, passports, vehicle registration, border control and prisons. 

Johnson is talking about a further wholesale assault on social provision, packaged as a move to help those struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. He has hinted that the £3.5 billion saved annually by the job cull could be used to fund tax cuts. 

In typical fashion, Johnson is appealing to the most selfish social layers in the upper middle class, claiming, “Every pound the government pre-empts from the taxpayer is money they can spend on their own priorities, on their own lives.” 

Britain's Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg arrives for a regional cabinet meeting at Middleport Pottery in Stoke on Trent, England, Thursday, May 12, 2022. (Oli Scarff/Pool Photo via AP)

Cabinet Office minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has joined Johnson’s call for civil service staffing to return to 2016 levels. At that point, after five years of austerity under David Cameron’s Tory-led coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, the civil service employed 384,000, the lowest number since the end of World War II. 

Staffing increased subsequently by around 25 percent, chiefly due to Brexit, and later in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Declarations that the pandemic is over are being used to justify the cuts. Rees-Mogg has declared that “we’re now trying to get back to normal.” 

Following the global financial crisis, Cameron sold his government’s slash-and-burn measures as “cutting waste and bureaucracy”. Johnson and Rees-Mogg repeat these claims under conditions where government departments are failing to stem mounting social and economic disasters on every front.

Johnson speaks of the need to reduce a civil service “swollen” by the pandemic, under conditions where infection rates are rising as a direct result of his government’s “herd immunity” policies.

Rees-Mogg, the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, spoke last week of “the requirements of Brexit and the pandemic now receding,” even as disputes over the Irish border are escalating the possibility of all-out trade war with the European Union.

Rees-Mogg has been spearheading efforts to end working from home, demanding that ministers send a “clear message to… your department to ensure a rapid return to the office.” The living Dickensian caricature was reportedly found stalking his department’s offices last month, leaving printed calling cards on empty desks, with the message, “Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon. With every good wish, Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.” 

For all the government’s insistence that its planned cuts are “not ideological,” the announcement was followed by a report that Rees-Mogg had also called for an operational review of all arms-length funding bodies. These 295 bodies in England, including the Arts Council, the British Film Institute and Historic England, employ more than 300,000 people, and spend more than £220 billion each year. 

Rees-Mogg’s review will assess whether each “should be abolished or retained.” As part of the process, it would ask whether the body is appropriately taking decisions under review or whether “an alternative is more fitting”—such as direct ministerial interference. Bodies surviving the review would be required to implement savings of at least five percent within three years. 

The attack on public services is being accelerated by the Johnson government’s need to fund its support for the NATO proxy war against Russia. Military spending already reached £3 billion, nearing the annual savings being sought from these job cuts. 

Prior to his job cull announcement, Johnson had floated the idea of tax cuts in response to the cost-of-living crisis. These were quashed by Treasury, with a source telling the Guardian that Johnson was just “echoing the chancellor’s ambition to cut taxes.” Chancellor Rishi Sunak then ruled out a limited one-off windfall tax on energy companies, even as every household in the UK was hit by a 54 percent rise in energy bills, with another hike due in October.

There is concern within official circles that the scale of job cuts will meet a response from public sector workers. Not the least anxiety has come from the public sector unions who complain they were not consulted. The Public Commercial and Services (PCS) union declared a strike is “very much on the table.”

Mark Serwotka, its nominally “left” leader, made clear the union’s chief concern is to defer and restrict any such response from its members, stating, “it is almost inevitable we will vote to move to an industrial action ballot early in the autumn.” 

The DVLA headquarters in Swansea (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

During a strike at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) last year, the only industrial action called by any union over COVID-19, the PCS showed greater energy in ending the dispute than in safeguarding workers’ health. In the face of a state-orchestrated attack on the strike, the PCS’s primary concern was to ensure it remained isolated.

Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA, representing senior civil servants, appealed to their role in staffing some of the most reactionary arms of the state. He tweeted, “Are ministers serious about what the consequences of these cuts would be? Are they really saying they won’t replace people who leave in the Border Force or the MoD [Ministry of Defence]?” 

Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), similarly appealed to the national economic interest. She told Sky News, “This is back to austerity—and we saw how austerity failed not only ordinary people but the country in the end by holding back growth.”

Mexico Leads in Opposing the Cuba Blockade and US Imperialism

W.T. Whitney Jr.

Photograph Source: Eneas De Troya – CC BY 2.0

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) visited Cuba on May 8-9. He began by highlighting regional unity as good for equal promotion of economic development for all states. AMLO addressed themes he had discussed previously when Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel visited Mexico City in 2021.

At that time AMLO, by virtue of Mexico serving as president pro tempore, presided over a summit meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean states (CELAC). He proposed building “in the Western Hemisphere something similar to what was the economic community that gave rise to the current European Union.”

Two days later, AMLO included Diaz-Canel in a celebration of the 200^th anniversary of Mexican independence. Praising Cuba’s dignity in resisting U.S. aggression, he called for an end to the blockade.

Months later in Havana, on May 8, 2022, AMLO, speaking before Cuban leaders and others, recalled “times when the United States wanted to own the continent …. They were at their peak in annexations, deciding on independence wherever, creating new countries, freely associated states, protectorates, military bases, and … invasions.”

U.S. leaders, he declared, need to be convinced “that a new relationship among the peoples of America … is possible.” He called for “replacing the OAS with a truly autonomous organism.” CELAC presumably would be that alternative alliance. Formed in 2011, CELAC includes all Western Hemisphere nations except for the United States and Canada.

The United States in 1948 established the Organization of American States (OAS) for Cold War purposes. When the OAS expelled Cuba in 1962, only Mexico’s government opposed that action and later Mexico was one of two nations rejecting an OAS demand to break off diplomatic relations with Cuba.

AMLO predicted that “by 2051, China will exert domination over 64.8% of the world market and the United States only 25%, or even 10%.” He suggested that, “Washington, finding this unacceptable,” would be tempted “to resolve that disparity through force.”

AMLO rejected “growing competition and disunity that will inevitably lead to decline in all the Americas.” He called for “Integration with respect to sovereignties and forms of government and effective application of a treaty of economic-commercial development suiting everybody.” The “first step” would be for the United States “to lift its blockade of this sister nation.”

AMLO’s visit prompted agreements on practicalities. The two presidents determined that Cuba would supply Mexico with medications and vaccines – particularly Cuba’s anti-Covid-19 Abdala vaccine for children. Mexico’s government will send almost 200 Mexican youths to Cuba to study medicine; 500 Cuban physicians will go to Mexico to work in underserved areas. The two presidents signed a general agreement providing for expanded cooperation in other areas.

Before arriving in Cuba, AMLO had visited Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Belize. Along the way he reportedly complained that, “The United States may have awarded $40 billion in aid to Ukraine but doesn’t fulfill its promise of years ago of helping out Central America.”

The two presidents’ encounter in Havana raises the question of a long-term Mexican role in mobilizing collective resistance to U.S. domination and the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Mexico is well-positioned to lead that effort, what with strong economic and commercial connections with the United States. The United States, leaning on Mexico as an economic partner, may well be receptive to certain demands.

According to the White House-based Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, “Mexico is currently our largest goods trading partner with $614.5 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2019.”

Beyond that, and in relation to Cuba, Mexico has its own revolutionary tradition and longstanding ties with Cuba.  She is well-placed to lead a strong international campaign to undo the U.S. blockade.

In his major speech, AMLO cited support from Mexico in Cuba’s first War for Independence. He mentioned Cubans’ collaboration with Mexico’s much-admired president Benito Juárez and pointed out that Mexico in1956 hosted Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro as they prepared for their uprising against Batista. AMLO cited former Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas’s solidarity visit to Cuba in 1961 after the CIA -organized Bay of Pigs invasion. In token of cultural ties between the two peoples, Mexico was the guest of honor at Havana’s recently concluded International Book Fair.

José Martí warrants special attention. In exile, Martí lived, taught and wrote in Mexico City from 1875 to 1875. Afterwards he stayed connected with Mexican friends. Martí would later write admiringly about the liberal reforms of Indian-descended president Juarez, whom he regarded as the “impenetrable guardian of America.”

That “America” would be “Our America,” which became the title of a Martí essay with deep meaning for unity and for separation from the United States. “Our America” proclaimed that the culture and history of lands south of the Rio Bravo (Rio Grande) originated autonomously, quite apart from European and U.S. influences. The essay appeared first in January 1891, in two journals simultaneously.  One was El Partido Liberal, published in Mexico, the other being a New York periodical.

Unity among Latin American and Caribbean nations appears to be precarious as the U.S. government prepares to host the 9^th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, on June 6-10. The Summit is an offshoot of the OAS which, according to its website, “serves as the technical secretariat of the Summits process.”

The United States has indicated that the leftist governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua won’t be receiving invitations. AMLO, speaking in Havana, reiterated his objection and once more stated that if nations are left out, he will not attend. Nor will the presidents of Bolivia and Honduras, Luis Arce and Xiomara Castro, respectively.

The presidents of several Caribbean nations will also be staying away. They point to the hypocrisy of U.S.-appointed Venezuelan president Juan Guaidó being invited, but not Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel.  Unhappy with U.S. advice on transparency of elections and Russia-Brazil relations, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro will not attend.

The conclusion here is that the old system of regional alliances is unstable and that the timing may be right for renewed resistance to U.S domination and the blockade. Now would be the occasion for U.S. anti-imperialists and blockade opponents to align their strategizing and efforts with actions, trends, and flux in Latin America and the Caribbean. And, most certainly, they would be paying attention to actions and policies of Mexico’s government.

Martí had often corresponded with his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado.  His letter of May 18, 1895, the day before he died in battle, stated that, “The Cuban war … has come to America in time to prevent Cuba’s annexation to the United States. …  And Mexico, will it not find a wise, effective and immediate way of helping, in due time, its own defender?”

Wall Street plunges as global recession looms

Nick Beams

Yesterday’s large-scale sell-off on Wall Street, in which shares of major retail companies experienced their biggest decline since the October 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, was in response to clear indications the US and global economy are moving rapidly into recession.

A television screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, March 16, 2022, shows the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]

Wall Street has been falling since it reached record highs at the start of the year as increasing interest rates hit high-tech companies whose rise has been fueled by the pouring in of virtually free money by the US Federal Reserve. But this supply is now being cut off as the Fed lifts interest rates in response to the highest inflation in 40 years to clamp down on workers’ wage demands.

As a consequence, the tech-heavy NASDAQ index has fallen by more than 25 percent this year amid signs the speculative bubble is being deflated, increasing the risks of a major crisis in the financial system.

But yesterday’s sell-off, in which the Dow lost more than 1,100 points in its worst day in almost two years, the S&P dropped by 4 percent and the NASDAQ was down by 4.7 percent, marked a qualitative new turn as growing fears of recession took hold.

The shares of Target, one of the biggest US retailers, plunged by 25 percent after the company reported its costs had risen by $1 billion due to higher gas prices and transportation costs.

At the same time, it was hit by falls in discretionary spending as working-class families have had to divert growing portions of their declining real wages to spending on essential items, such as food and gas, in the face of an inflationary spiral which has seen the price of these items rise faster than the official inflation rate of 8.5 percent.

The Target crash was mirrored by Walmart whose shares fell 6.8 percent after dropping by 11 percent the previous day.

Numerous statements by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and other officials have made clear that, if necessary, the Fed will induce a recession on a scale equal to, or even greater than, that instigated by its chair Paul Volcker in the 1980s which created massive social and economic devastation.

Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, Powell made it clear the central bank would push ahead with its lifting of interest rates to suppress growing wage demands.

“Restoring price stability is a non-negotiable need. It is something we have to do. There could be some pain involved,” he said.

Powell’s remarks underscore the essential class and social dynamic which has shaped and determined Fed policy over decades.

When the financial system imploded in 2008 because of the rampant speculation over the previous two decades, fueled by its determination to sustain the stock market after the crash of October 1987, the Fed instituted the regime of quantitative easing, pouring trillions into the financial system.

This brought about a massive redistribution of wealth to the upper echelons of society with stock portfolios rising to record highs as workers were hit with major job destruction as real wage reductions were enforced by the trade unions.

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in 2020 and the financial markets froze out of fear that necessary public health measures would impact Wall Street, the Fed shoveled over $4 trillion more into the financial system. The government bailed out the corporations and a return-to-work drive was initiated, in defiance of all science, to ensure the profit flow was not interrupted.

The refusal of governments around the world, following the lead of the US, to institute meaningful measures on an international scale to eliminate COVID-19, led to a supply chain crisis resulting in the escalation of inflation, fueled by the endless supply of money to the Wall Street speculators.

But the class struggle, suppressed for decades by the trade unions, is now re-emerging in the waves of strikes and social protests in the US and around the world.

The same class dynamic which created the crisis is at work, albeit in a different form, as the US Fed and other central banks move to impose a recession to crush this movement.

In the UK, where inflation has hit 9 percent, the highest rate for any of the major economies, the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, while warning of an “apocalyptic” increase in food prices, has insisted that interest rate rises will continue whatever the cost. “We have to get [inflation] back to target. And that is clear,” he told the UK parliament this week.

The Fed’s tightening of monetary policy is already impacting on the global economy. Rising interest rates bring economic stagnation while the fall in domestic currencies vis-à-vis the dollar increases debt burdens and lifts inflation, especially in food.

This week the Institute of International Finance, a worldwide grouping of 450 financial companies, warned that the world economy would at best flatline this year with the recession risk “elevated” with a “disorderly tightening of financial conditions” underway.

Less-developed countries, struggling with the effects of COVID-19 and now the escalation of food prices because of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine are already being hit, leading to massive social protests and strikes spearheaded by the eruption against the Rajapakse government in Sri Lanka.

The social eruptions in that country are the outcome of global processes at work in every country and which will intensify in the next stage of the class war being waged by the ruling elites as they seek to make the working class pay for the crisis they have created.

There is no economic upturn in prospect. The trends are the same everywhere. The European economy is stagnant and on the brink of recession. The Japanese economy, the world’s third largest, contracted at an annualised rate of 1 percent in the first quarter. The US economy shrank at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the same period.

The history of the economic events of the past decades and the past two years, in particular, is a searing indictment of the profit system.

Refusal to act on COVID has led to millions of unnecessary deaths and created an out-of-control upsurge in inflation.

The US-NATO proxy war against Russia has resulted in the food crisis that is imposing starvation on hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

The pumping out of trillions of dollars by the world’s central banks has fueled the inflation fire, while creating a mass speculative bubble that threatens to implode at any time.

And on top of this, finance capital is moving relentlessly to make the working class pay through ever lower wages and cuts to social services by inducing a recession with untold social and economic consequences.

Johnson government pushes UK to the brink of trade war with Europe over Northern Ireland Protocol

Chris Marsden

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told parliament yesterday that the UK government would soon introduce a law unilaterally changing the Northern Ireland Protocol governing post-Brexit trade with the European Union (EU).

Responding, the EU warned, “Should the UK decide to move ahead with a bill disapplying constitutive elements of the Protocol as announced today by the UK government, the EU will need to respond with all measures at its disposal.”

Truss’s move was anticipated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a Monday visit to Northern Ireland and in an accompanying statement posted in the Belfast Telegraph. Johnson, who negotiated the protocol, centred his justification for abandoning it on the claim that he was acting to defend the 1998 Northern Ireland agreement!

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP, of the Democratic Unionist Party while visiting Northern Ireland. Hillsborough Castle, 16/05/2022. (Credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

The “Good Friday Agreement” brought an end to 30 years of armed conflict between the Irish Republican Army and its political arm Sinn Féin, and the British state forces and their Unionist and loyalist political allies. But it did so by enshrining sectarian divisions, making all aspects of political life conditional on the joint agreement of self-designated representatives of the republican/Catholic and unionist/Protestant communities. What Johnson was in fact stressing is that he was fully behind the Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) demand for the junking of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The May 5 Assembly elections saw Sinn Féin top the poll, with 29 percent of first preference votes, consolidating its hold in Catholic/nationalist areas. The DUP’s vote collapsed in favour of the more hardline Traditional Unionist Voice. But there was also a significant increase in support for the liberal and non “community” aligned Alliance Party. Faced with Sinn Féin’s right to designate the post of First Minister, and a pro-EU party majority in the Assembly, the DUP collapsed it by refusing to nominate a deputy First Minister.

The protocol is designed to avoid the return of a “hard border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland post Brexit. But though it displaces external EU customs checks on trade from the North/South border to ports in Northern Ireland and the UK, it has led to significant problems and costs. Checks on goods from the UK at Northern Irish ports now represent a staggering 20 percent of all checks at the EU’s borders.

Johnson is using the DUP’s stance as a weapon against the EU, insisting that the threat to the Good Friday Agreement has emerged because “One part of the political community in Northern Ireland feels like its aspirations and identity are threatened by the working of the Protocol.” He pledged that “this Government is not neutral on the Union”, adding that he was “heartened to hear that Sir Keir Starmer made clear in a recent interview here that the Labour Party under his leadership would campaign for the Union, should there ever be a border poll.” The Good Friday Agreement agrees provision for a referendum on Irish unification in the event of a major demographic and political shift in the northern six counties.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, right, is greeted by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg prior to a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, January 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys, Pool)

In parliament, Truss said the government’s intention was to introduce legislation within a matter of weeks to allow goods from Great Britain going into Northern Ireland but not headed onward for Ireland and the EU to go through a “green channel” exempt from customs checks. It would also allow the government to set tax policy for the whole of the UK and provide the option for companies to adopt either EU or UK standards. Such measures would pitch Northern Ireland more firmly into the Brexit project of turning the UK into a low tax, deregulated strategic competitor to the EU.

This is a particular challenge to the Republic of Ireland, which operates as an investment platform for global corporations attracted by its 12.5 percent corporation tax and absence of economic regulations on vast transfers of capital overseas. But for some in the Conservative Party, this is not enough. Writing on Conservative Home, arch Brexiteer Andrea Leadsom urged the government to respond to the “existential threat” of the protocol risking “the break-up of the UK” by establishing a “freeport across the whole of Northern Ireland.”

Vehicles at the port of Larne, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

The response of Sinn Féin is to advance itself as an ally of the European imperialist powers in the conflict with Britain, and as a guarantor of US imperialism’s economic dominance of the Republic and the access of its corporations to the European market. Immediately after the elections, the party’s newspaper An Phoblacht said the Good Friday Agreement was now “directly threatened” by the DUP and the Tory government and appealed for the “EU, and the US administration” to “hold firm” and for “the Irish government to step firmly up to the mark”.

Prior to Johnson’s visit, the party’s Stormont leader Michelle O’Neill met with Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin in Dublin to declare that the protocol “is here to stay.”

The working class north and south of the border, Catholic and Protestant, faces an increasingly desperate situation as the cost of living becomes intolerable. The hike on fuel, food and housing costs is what most immediately concerns workers and their families. Northern Ireland has the lowest median weekly household income in the UK (£439 a week) after housing costs, which have historically been low but are now rising dramatically. In February, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research warned that Northern Ireland could face a surge in extreme poverty of more than 67 percent compared with a UK average of 30 percent.

For Johnson to claim that the actions of his party are motivated by concerns over the cost of living is a sick joke. But supporting the EU’s own trade war agenda is just another road to hell. It would only line workers up once again behind opposed groups of their own exploiters.

Sinn Féin’s near quarter century of power sharing has done nothing to fundamentally redress the social oppression facing Catholic workers—with its West Belfast heartlands suffering the greatest areas of housing need and the highest levels of intergenerational unemployment. Instead, it has worked with the unionists in imposing austerity on both Protestant and Catholic workers in the interests of big business.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson meets with Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin while visiting Northern Ireland. Hillsborough Castle, 16/05/2022. (Credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

Last year, when Sinn Féin topped the poll in the Republic of Ireland general election, the party’s finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said of the south’s 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, “We are a party that believes there needs to be a competitive edge in relation to taxation in this State and that needs to be continued.” He said of the major corporations, “They know that Sinn Féin isn’t going to go after them.”

Support for any imperialist power or their political proxies is made more dangerous still by the fact that all sides in this conflict are participants in an escalating proxy war by the NATO powers against Russia in Ukraine.

Even amid her rant against the EU over Brexit, Leadsom began by asserting that “Vladimir Putin’s violent and illegal attack on Ukraine has brought out the best in Europe. From defensive military support to humanitarian aid and the generosity of European citizens, Putin has done more to strengthen NATO’s unity and Europe’s friendship than at any time since the Second World War.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits Thales UK in Belfast which manufactures the NLAW and Starstreak missiles. 16/05/2022. (Credit: Picture by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr)

During his Belfast visit, Johnson visited a Thales UK plant that manufactures the Starstreak high-velocity anti-air missiles and NLAW anti-tank weapons sent by the UK to Ukraine in their thousands, where ITV reported that he “joked ‘watch out everybody’ as he peered through the aiming unit of a lightweight multiple launcher missile system.”

Sinn Féin fully backs this war. It has purged its website of old articles opposing anti-Russia rhetoric, declaring them to be “out of date”, while party President Mary Lou McDonald declares of Ukraine, “Ireland understands the impact of occupation and imperialist aggression…”

The sharp escalation of inter-imperialist antagonisms between the UK and European powers that gave rise to Brexit has found its most grotesque expression in Ireland, where the border between the Republic and the North has no function other than to protect the remaining outpost of Britain’s historic subjugation of Ireland.

Protests against hike in food and fuel prices across Middle East and North Africa

Jean Shaoul

The surging cost of living and the unavailability of basic goods are triggering mass protests around the world.

The Middle East and North Africa has been ravaged for decades by US-led wars and economic sanctions. This situation has been made much worse by Washington’s sanctions and exclusion of Russia from the international payments system, the disruption caused by the war in Ukraine, and repeated droughts brought on by climate change and the mismanagement of water resources, all while the countries’ corrupt elites have plundered the economy.

Tunisian demonstrators gather during a protest against Tunisian President Kais Saied in Tunis, Tunisia, May 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)

The impact on global food supplies, particularly of corn, wheat, barley, sunflower oil and seeds, and on prices is immense. Russia and Ukraine, whose April planting season has been affected by the destruction of machinery and equipment and the flight of farmworkers, together normally produce one-third of the world’s wheat. Grain’s global price rose 21 percent in the 10 days from the start of the war in Ukraine in last February.

The Middle East and North Africa is home to some of the largest humanitarian and refugee crises in the world. It imports 50 percent of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, with countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, and Palestine, already battered by inflation or humanitarian crises, among the worst affected. Some countries were battling severe levels of hunger and malnutrition well before the war.

According to the World Bank 20 percent of the region’s people were food insecure in 2020. Now food and fuel prices, at their highest level in decades, are expected to keep rising, making it impossible for even those in work to buy such food as is available.

World Bank Chief economist Carmen Reinhart commented, “I don’t want to be melodramatic, but it’s not a far stretch that food insecurity and riots were part of the story behind the Arab Spring.”

Corinne Fleischer, the World Food Programme’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said, “This crisis is creating shock waves in the food markets that touch every home in this region. No one is spared.”

In Iran, protests that began May 5 in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan have spread across the country after the government cut food import subsidies, leading to up to 300 percent price hikes for some flour-based staples. It also raised the price of basic commodities such as cooking oil and dairy products.

The subsidies were put in place in 2018 when the Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Tehran, reimposing economic sanctions that targeted Iran’s vital energy exports on which it depends for much of its revenue. The government’s mismanagement of the pandemic and the rise in world food and fuel prices has compounded Iran’s already difficult financial position.

With inflation running at between 40 and 50 percent and nearly half of Iran’s 85 million population below the poverty line, angry protesters have burned down shops. The rallies have seen calls for the country’s top leaders to step down. Protesters have raised demands for greater political freedom and an end to the Islamic Republic.

The government has responded by mobilizing its security forces, with unconfirmed reports that at least four protesters have been killed. It is offering palliatives in the form of cash handouts for two months and thereafter electronic coupons that will allow some Iranians to buy a limited amount of bread at subsidized prices.

On Monday, bus drivers in Tehran went on strike to demand their unpaid wages and the 57 percent wage rise approved by the Supreme Labor Council more than two months ago, with mechanics and other workers at bus terminals taking part. On Tuesday the police was using around 700 of the city’s buses to transport its own staff, while Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) vans were being used to transport passengers across the capital and IRGC drivers were being trained to drive the city buses.

The police have arrested more than a dozen strikers, including one of the union organisers, while the government has tightened censorship rules for state-controlled media covering the protests. It announced the closure of all schools and workplaces, not just in Tehran but elsewhere where there are strikes and protests.

The protests follow strikes and demonstrations by teachers that have been ongoing in several cities over the last year demanding the implementation of recent legislation that pledged to improve their pay.

In Turkey, 2022 started with a wave of wildcat strikes. Earlier this month doctors went on nationwide strike demanding better wages and benefits. It follows repeated days of strikes over the last six months.

In North Africa, teachers on fixed-term contracts in Morocco went on strike again last week over their lack of job security in a bitter struggle that has been ongoing over the last four years after Morocco’s education ministry ended permanent contracts for public school teachers. While Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch had promised prior to his election last September to address the long running dispute, he has done nothing to address their grievances.

In Tunisia, thousands of people took to the streets on Sunday in opposition to President Kais Saied, who suspended parliament and the government last summer and assumed executive powers. With the country facing bankruptcy and without the foreign currency reserves to pay food suppliers, leading to shortages, Saied is in talks with the International Monetary Fund that will require further austerity and repression for any bailout package.

The protesters demanded a return to democracy, rejecting his replacement of the independent electoral commission with one he named himself. They chanted, “The people want democracy” and “Saied has led the country to starvation” at the main rally in Tunis city. It was the largest protest in months and follows a far smaller demonstration supporting him a week ago.

It is not just the region’s most impoverished countries that are facing strikes and protests. The rising cost of living has sparked growing unrest in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE), the playground of some of the world’s richest people, involving the poorest workers—typically migrant workers from South Asia and the Philippines.

Last week fast-food delivery workers employed by Talabat, the Middle East arm of German food delivery company Delivery Hero, braved the UAE’s draconian laws that outlaw unionized labour, ban strikes and imprison or deport striking workers, and stayed home. The workers organised the illegal strike via social media, calling for an increased rate for deliveries over and above their current rate of $2.04 per delivery. It follows a walkout by Deliveroo delivery drivers that forced the company to increase the rate per delivery from $2.04 per delivery to $2.79.

The strike comes after the global rise in fuel prices sent the cost of fuel and other basics through the roof, slashing the take-home pay of riders who must buy their own petrol and making it difficult for them to send home money to their families who depend on the remittances, and themselves face rampant inflation.

Saudi Arabia and Oman were at pains to reassure people that there was no shortage of wheat supplies after India announced a ban on the export of wheat to preserve it supply and ensure food security within the country—although it stressed that all irrevocable contracts for wheat exports would be honoured, allowing Egypt and some other countries exemption from the ban.

Social workers and day care educators carry out warning strikes throughout Germany

Marianne Arens

Warning strikes and rallies involving workers in social and educational services have been taking place across Germany for two and a half months.

On Wednesday, the third and final round of negotiations began in Potsdam. The workers are fighting for better conditions, higher pay scales and reduced workloads. But the negotiations being conducted with the municipal employers by the Verdi and GEW unions, together with the German Civil Servants' Federation, will not resolve any of their problems.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, nursery and social workers have been deemed “essential workers.” At great risk, they have worked the entire time, many contracting COVID-19.

In working class neighbourhoods and social hotspots, they bear the brunt of providing child care, child and youth welfare services, refugee assistance and disability services. But their working conditions have not improved for seven years, since the big day care strike of 2015. Due to the great stress and poor pay in the sector, there is now a shortage of over 173,000 workers at nurseries and day care centres.

Striking day care workers in Frankfurt am Main [Photo: WSWS] [Photo: WSWS]

In recent weeks, thousands have taken to the streets across Germany. Several hundred social workers came to Hanover for a day of action on May 2, and over a thousand kindergarten teachers rallied in Frankfurt am Main on May 4. In Gelsenkirchen, 10,000 educators gathered on May 11, in Hamburg there were over 2,000 on May 12, and another 2,000 demonstrated in Munich.

Large rallies were also held in Kiel, Stuttgart, Leipzig and elsewhere. In Marburg, hundreds of underpaid employees of charitable welfare associations and church organisations protested, although they are not directly affected by the current negotiations. They also function as social workers in schools and centres for the disabled.

Despite a boycott by the major media outlets, the social workers and day care centre workers succeeded in making it clear to the public that things cannot go on like they are. “Day care centres are bursting at the seams, we have no staff,” one kindergarten teacher in Frankfurt said. Another added, “I can’t go on, I’m already exhausted by 11 o’clock in the morning.”

A day care centre director in Bremen said, “I wish politicians would come and work with us for at least one day. Then maybe they will see that this is not just talk from us. The situation is damn serious.”

Many express fears about the future on Twitter. One worker tweeted, “I love my job, but I don’t think I can do it until retirement age.” Practically all agree on waging a longer and more aggressive strike if necessary.

The outbreak of protests by social and education workers is part of a larger movement that is also increasingly affecting health workers. For example, a strike at university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) has just been extended until May 26. At NRW university hospitals, over 98 percent voted for an indefinite strike. In Frankfurt am Main and Stuttgart there have already been joint rallies of social service workers and nurses.

Nursing staff in Düsseldorf on 12 May, during the indefinite strike at the university hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia. The large placard reads “Asystole. I can’t carry on!” [Photo: WSWS] [Photo: WSWS]

This movement is by no means limited to Germany. Nurses are currently on strike in Madrid and in California. They are demonstrating throughout Vienna and are at the forefront of the social uprising in Sri Lanka. In Finland, nurses went on strike for a fortnight in April. In Nashville, Tennessee, nurses protested on behalf of a colleague accused of being solely responsible for a tragic medication error. There is also a growing willingness to strike in industry and logistics.

The protests by educators at day care centres and workers in social services are part of this growing movement. Their demands for relief from intolerable work pressures and for better pay resonate strongly with working people. A Forsa survey showed that 87 percent of respondents thought the demand for better pay was justified, and 81 percent would support shorter work hours in social and care services.

However, the negotiations in Potsdam will not bring any solution. This is the third and, for the time being, last round of negotiations. The negotiators from Verdi (public sector union), the GEW (education union) and the dbb (civil service union) represent the same political programme and belong to the same parties—the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens, Christian Democrats (CDU)—as their counterparts, the representatives of the Federation of Municipal Employers’ Associations (VKA), with whom they are supposedly negotiating.

The establishment politicians have once again increased the pressure on day care workers and social workers. The federal government has decided to prepare for open war against Russia, and the working class, above all public sector workers, are to bear the cost.

While the federal coalition of the SPD, Greens and Liberal Democrats (FDP) has pulled a special fund of €100 billion for the Bundeswehr (German military) out of the hat, the demands of public service workers are allegedly “not realisable for cost reasons.” This was stated by VKA President Karin Welge (SPD) in an interview with the German press agency dpa.

Welge went on to say that especially in view of the consequences of the Ukraine war and higher energy prices, municipal employers must be able to offer “reliable structures.” “We cannot provide general salary enhancements in the sense that every pay group gets more,” the VKA President said.

Politicians from all the establishment parties are already preparing measures to suppress resistance from the working class. In Saxony, one mayor responded to a warning strike with a lockout. The mayor of Öbisfelde-Weferlingen responded to the all-day warning strike on May 13 by shutting down all of the town’s day care centres and after-school care centres for the day, locking out all workers without pay. In doing so, he prevented the establishment of emergency child care arrangements and punished those who did not receive Verdi strike pay.

In Hesse, the state government told day care centres that it would raise the number of children per specialist from 25 to 30 with immediate effect, due to the influx of refugees from Ukraine. This is their answer to the demand for “relief.”

The trade unions have no answer to these attacks. Verdi leaders Frank Werneke and Christine Behle (both SPD), who have headed the negotiations in Potsdam, share the views of the government politicians on the war against Russia. They are not prepared to call on the working class to take real industrial action, even if the negotiations fail.

On the contrary, the demands being advanced by Verdi are designed to stall industrial action and reach a rotten compromise. They are aimed at achieving slightly better pay through the manipulation of pay scales. They are demanding an extension of the time allowed for preparation and follow-up work, as well as better conditions for the qualification of those joining the profession from other fields, who make up an increasingly large part of the staff. On all of these questions, mini-compromises can be reached that are then counteracted twice and three times over by concessions on other issues.

The demands also distract from the fact that the unions are not defending public sector workers against skyrocketing inflation. As a result of the billions given to the banks and corporations in the financial crisis and the pandemic, as well as the sanctions against Russia, inflation officially rose to 7.4 percent in April. For energy and food it is already much higher.

The introduction of a sliding scale of wages is therefore urgently needed throughout the public sector, although it alone would not improve the educators’ profession.

There is no question that the working class is ready to fight. But it must no longer allow itself to be ordered about by Verdi, GEW, dbb & Co. Significantly, Verdi leader Frank Werneke stressed on the first day of negotiations in Potsdam, “From our side, we have no interest in a week-long strike.”