“Reconstruction of Ukraine” Conference: The dispute over the spoils has begun

Peter Schwarz

War promises profits. This is also true for the Ukrainian war. Before an end to the fighting is in sight, the dispute over the division of the spoils has already begun. Therein lies the significance of the so-called “Expert Conference on the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” which took place in Berlin on Tuesday under the patronage of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Ursula von der Leyen and Olaf Scholz welcome Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal at the Ukraine Reconstruction Conference [Photo by Bundesregierung/Hartmann]

Huge sums are at stake. At the beginning of July, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal put the financial requirements for reconstruction at $750 billion, while the World Bank and the EU Commission cited the sum of $349 billion in September. These figures, which refer only to the first three months of the war, are now considered outdated. And they do not include the billions with which the US and Europe are supporting the Ukrainian military.

A fierce dispute is raging over how such large sums are to be raised and who will benefit from them. One thing is certain, however. The Ukrainian population will not see any of it. Whatever ends up flowing will end up in the bank accounts of Ukrainian oligarchs and Western corporations. The latter not only expect good business from the “reconstruction” but also a dominant influence over the Ukrainian economy. German corporations, in particular, are waiting impatiently to profit from the consequences of the war and to play the leading role in Ukraine in the future.

The day before the reconstruction conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal opened the 5th German-Ukrainian Business Forum. The Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations (Ostausschuss der deutschen Wirtschaft), which organized the forum in collaboration with other business associations and the Ukrainian government, was pleased: “The large turnout at the conference showed the broad interest of German business in getting involved in reconstruction. It was the first such conference in Germany since the start of the war, and at the same time the most high-profile event of its kind to date.”

Working groups of German companies and business associations had written a dossier for the forum, “Rebuild Ukraine,” which encourages the Ukrainian government to “strategically use allocated funds and policy decisions in a way that creates incentives for the private sector to invest and create wealth.” It describes numerous investment opportunities and breaks them down into construction, logistics and infrastructure, digitalization, energy, health and agribusiness.

Ukrainian Trade Minister Yulia Svyrydenko promised the assembled business representatives to reduce the role of the state through privatization. German Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) enticed them with the prospect: “Ukraine is a premium trading partner for raw materials, energy and as a supplier. It is therefore worth any commitment to bring Ukraine closer to the EU’s internal market.”

The following day, the conference addressed the task of raising the huge sums needed to integrate Ukraine into the EU internal market as a raw materials supplier and subcontractor.

“Even though one should always be careful with historical comparisons, what is at stake here is nothing less than creating a new Marshall Plan for the 21st century,” Scholz and von der Leyen wrote in a joint guest article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Under the Marshall Plan, the United States had helped Western European capitalism get back on its feet after World War II.

“Reconstruction will be a big, big task,” Scholz added. “And we will have to invest a great deal to make it work well. Ukraine can’t do it alone. Nor can the European Union do it alone. Only the whole global community can do that.”

Von der Leyen also stressed that no country or union could handle reconstruction alone. Strong partners such as the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Australia and other countries were needed, as well as institutions such as the World Bank. Every euro, every dollar, every pound, every yen was an investment in Ukraine, he said.

However, in Scholz’s “global community” there are highly divergent views about the division of labour when it comes to “reconstruction.” Washington, Brussels, Berlin and other European capitals are bitterly arguing over who pays, who decides and who benefits.

Washington’s position is that since it bears the brunt of military support, Europe must therefore shoulder the lion’s share of reconstruction. Germany’s attempt to establish itself as the leading economic power in Ukraine is viewed with suspicion in the United States and in other European states. Washington is therefore not prepared to leave the management of Ukraine’s “reconstruction” to Brussels or Berlin.

Conflicts also exist over whether Ukraine should be supported with grants or with repayable loans. The US and Germany are in favour of grants, while most other European countries are in favour of loans.

The conference in Berlin was not supposed to make any decisions but to scope out the terrain. Scholz and von der Leyen had invited high-level economic experts, government policymakers, members of think tanks and representatives of international institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to make “expert recommendations on how to proceed.”

The German Marshall Fund (GMF) think tank produced a detailed study on the reconstruction of Ukraine. It advocates giving the leadership not to the EU but to the G7, the association of the seven leading Western industrialized countries, so as not to deepen the conflict with the United States.

“Because security and reconstruction are mutually dependent, they must be joint tasks of the West,” Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the head of the GMF study, writes in the Tagesspiegel. “Under no circumstances should the United States take over military aid and leave reconstruction to the Europeans and other donors. Experience shows that mutual criticism would begin on day one.”

The study goes on to suggest that an “American with global standing” be appointed as supreme coordinator. This is because only the US was “capable of bringing together the necessary global coalition and building consensus among Ukraine’s partners.”

Kleine-Brockhoff had already played a key role in provoking the Ukraine conflict in 2013-14 as director of the German Marshall Fund and as German President Joachim Gauck’s chief of planning staff, about which the WSWS has reported.

The struggle for future economic control over Ukraine is just one aspect showing that this war is not about defending “democracy” but about imperialist interests. After a “reconstruction” as envisioned by Berlin, Brussels and Washington, Ukraine would not be “free” but a semi-colony of Western powers—a source of cheap raw materials and even cheaper labour; ruled by an authoritarian oligarchic regime that pays homage to Nazi collaborators, censors the press and has banned a dozen political parties since the war began.

Yet control of Ukraine is only a secondary goal for NATO. Its main interest is Russia, its vast landmass and immense raw materials. To inflict a military defeat on Russia and bring the country under their control, the US and its European allies are escalating the war ever further, even at the risk of a nuclear catastrophe.

Sunak unveils UK government of austerity and war

Robert Stevens

New Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s speech on entering Downing Street made clear that this near billionaire will act on the dictates of the financial oligarchy he himself epitomises.

 “I am standing here as your new Prime Minister,” he intoned. “Right now our country is facing a profound economic crisis. The aftermath of Covid still lingers. Putin’s war in Ukraine has destabilised energy markets and supply chains the world over.”

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaking as he arrives in Downing Street. October 25, 2022, London, United Kingdom. [Photo by Lauren Hurley/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The prime minister he deposed, Liz Truss, had made “some mistakes… I will place economic stability and confidence at the heart of this government’s agenda. This will mean difficult decisions to come.”

Sunak offered as his credentials his rolling out, as a former chancellor, the multi-hundred billion bailout of the corporations at the outset of the pandemic.

The “difficult decisions” he cites is code for imposing the most savage austerity yet on the working class, as demanded by the markets who tore down Truss for not being ready to impose such an offensive immediately. The financial elite insisted that Jeremy Hunt be urgently brought in to replace Kwasi Kwarteng as chancellor to tear up the unfunded tax giveaway budget for big business and replace it with “eye-wateringly” brutal austerity.

Sunak has now carried out a major clear-out of 11 of Truss’s ministers, but ensured that Hunt was kept as chancellor. In less than a week, on October 31, Hunt will present—as demanded by the global financial aristocracy—an emergency fiscal statement focused on escalating austerity against the working class.

There will no increase in public spending, while billions more will be diverted to fund the war machine. Sunak announced as a priority “Supporting our armed forces” to back “a terrible war that must be seen successfully to its conclusions”.

On this basis he retained Ben Wallace as defence minister. Last week Wallace, even as Truss was being wiped out, travelled to Washington to assure the Biden administration of Britain’s full backing of the US led NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. Biden congratulated Sunak Tuesday tweeting, “I look forward to enhancing our cooperation on issues critical to global security and prosperity, including continuing our strong support for Ukraine.”

As Sunak entered Downing Street, the British Army were deploying nearly 3,500 troops and up to 800 vehicles to Europe for their largest combat exercise on the continent for over a decade. The troops were part of Exercise Cerberus 22, a large-scale command post exercise, taking place in Germany. In a threat to Russia, a British Army Statement said, “the exercise, previously held in the UK on Salisbury Plain Training Area,” was taking place in “its new central European location to test its ability move personnel and equipment on a large scale and to operate in an expeditionary setting rather than being close to home.”

Colonel Owain Luke, Chief of Staff, Headquarters 3rd United Kingdom Division (3 (UK) Div), who are running the exercise, declared, “In addition to British brigades on the exercise… we are also joined by the 3rd Brigade Combat Team from the American 1st Cavalry Division. This exercise is also about building our interoperability with US Forces as well as aligning with NATO procedures and working under Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps.”

While Sunak has not yet committed, as Truss did, to increasing military spending to 3 percent of GDP by the end of the decade (£157 billion in extra funding) he will be told in no uncertain terms by Washington to do so.

Among the few others who retained their positions from the Truss government is Foreign Secretary James Cleverly. Cleverly only entered parliament in 2015 but has positioned himself as a leading anti-China hawk. In line with US imperialism’s confrontation of China, and Britain’s increasingly provocative manoeuvres, Cleverly said in the summer, “we do need to look at China’s influence, not just on the world stage but here in the UK”.

Dominic Raab, who served under Boris Johnson, returns as deputy prime minister and justice secretary. In the summer, before being sidelined by Truss, Raab introduced in parliament his Bill of Rights that is set to replace and eviscerate key provisions of the Human Rights Act.

Suella Braverman, a vicious right-winger, resigned from Truss’s government last week after being in breach of the ministerial code and launched an attack on her for not being firmly committed to anti-migrant measures. Sunak reappointed her as home secretary. She is charged with extricating Britain from the European Convention on Human Right (ECHR), after lawyers for asylum seekers used it to halt a deportation flight to Rwanda sanctioned under the Nationality and Borders Act. She wrote in Parliament’s House magazine in July, “Leaving the ECHR is the only solution which solves the problem” claiming it would “entirely consistent with international law.”

The financial markets were immediately buoyed by Sunak appointments and pledges, with the pound hitting its highest level since before the Truss/Kwarteng mini-budget. The cost of government borrowing fell back to the level it was before the budget.

This is just the calm before the storm in which Sunak’s agenda will be shipwrecked. He has an appointment for a head-on conflict with the working class. Sunak must go on the offensive under conditions in which decades of attacks have forced workers to mount the fightback seen in this summer’s strike wave. As millions of workers fear even switching on the heating due to enormous annual bills that are set to soar above £4,300 next April, the country is being run by a prime minister who is expected to spend £14,000 just to heat a swimming pool at one of his four mansions.

Despite the trade union bureaucracy doing all they can to dampen down the movement, struggles so far have included rail, postal, bus, port, refuse workers and barristers. Strikes involving up to 2 million public sector workers are in the offing in the next weeks and months. This week 70,000 university lecturers, librarians and admin staff at 150 universities voted to strike to demand better pay and working conditions, and to defend their pension rights.

Sunak is faced with a modern-day version of the 12 tasks that even Hercules would balk at. The Financial Times warned in an editorial ahead of the cabinet being selected of “Rishi Sunak’s uphill struggle to restore British stability”, as the “Former chancellor was least bad option to be the next Conservative premier”.

It added, “The party has also changed leader for a second time midterm through a deeply undemocratic process of its own devising… If Sunak cannot quickly restore stability, an election will be unavoidable.

Moreover, “He inherits a deeply fractured party facing decisions on issues such as spending and immigration that will inflame the fault-lines. Sunak is under pressure from the rightwing to scrap post-Brexit trading rules with Northern Ireland, poisoning relations with the EU.”

The sordid changeover of yet another unelected Tory prime minister was only possible due to the role of Labour and trade union bureaucracy, which has kept the government afloat during the last seven years of ever deepening crisis for British capitalism.

Labour’s role as bitter enemy of the working class was demonstrated by the tweet party leader Sir Keir Starmer issued Tuesday. He has called for a general election, which Labour, backed by sections of the ruling class see as vital for the rescue of British capitalism. But his first move as another bitter enemy of the working class entered Downing Street was to declare, “Congratulations, Rishi Sunak, on becoming Prime Minister and making history as the first British Asian PM.”

PSOE-Podemos, unions oversee largest growth of inequality in Spain since 2008 crash

Santiago Guillen

Labor Minister Yolanda Diaz Perez of Spain with U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty J. Walsh in the background. [Photo by U.S. Department of Labor / CC BY 2.0]

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government is overseeing the largest fall in living standards since the 2008 global economic crisis, and the savage EU austerity imposed by successive PSOE and right-wing Popular Party governments at the behest of the banks.

Since the pandemic hit in March 2020, inequality has surged due to massive bank bailouts and the NATO war in Ukraine against Russia. According to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the Spanish population at risk of poverty or social exclusion increased in 2021 to 27.8 percent. In 2018 it was 21.5 percent, which means that more than 1 million people fell into poverty over the last two years.

The latest report from the FOESSA foundation, linked to the Catholic charity Caritas, points in the same direction. Six million people in Spain are in a state of severe social exclusion, an increase of 50 percent over 2018; less than half of households are safe from suffering some type of social exclusion.

According to the NGO Save the Children, one in three Spanish children lives in poverty, suffers from severe material deprivation or lives in households with low employment intensity—i.e., whose working age members did less than 20 percent of their total work potential in the year prior to the survey. Spain is the third European country with the highest rate of risk of poverty and child exclusion, only surpassed by Romania and Bulgaria.

At the same time, the ongoing capitalist breakdown has been seized upon by the capitalist oligarchy occupying the heights of society to plunder unprecedented wealth. As Marx wrote, the accumulation of wealth at one pole requires the accumulation of poverty, misery and degradation at the other.

The annual report of the European Network for the Fight against Poverty and Social Exclusion, indicates that the income of the richest 10 percent of society grew by 11.8 percent more than that of the poorest 10 percent in 2021, 1.3 percentage points more than in 2020. This increase is the largest in the 13 years since this study has been carried out.

All these data mark a catastrophic situation for working families. The worst, however, is yet to come, as inflation skyrockets well above wage increases. Only 400,000 workers out of a workforce of 20 million have salary revision clauses pegged to inflation. The trade unions are the chief guarantors of this policy, actively working with employers to enforce wage agreements well below inflation, which in September was 9 percent. De facto, this implies widespread real wage declines.

For example, in the metal sector, the average salary increase will be only 2.29 percent for almost 940,000 workers. In the chemical sector it will be only 2 percent this year, after rising only 1 percent in 2021 (with an inflation of 6.5 percent). Construction wages will rise 4 percent, while for civil servants it will be only 3.5 percent. In banking, the union bureaucracies signed ridiculous increases of 2.5 percent in 2021, 1 percent in 2022 and 1.25 percent in 2023.

For 75 percent of workers with a collective agreement, raises will not reach 4 percent, and it will be even worse for the 65 percent of Spanish workers who are not subject to any agreement.

The union leaders defend their role as the domestic police force to enforce wage increases below inflation to allow the financial oligarchy to increase its profits and wage NATO’s war in Ukraine. Javier Pacheco, general secretary of the Podemos-linked Workers Commissions (CC.OO) of Catalonia recently declared: “I don’t think we are in a position to agree on collective agreements with wage increases at today’s inflation levels.”

For more and more working class families, it will be impossible to make ends meet. Although inflation stands at 9 percent, many basic products have seen their prices rise much higher. A study by the Organization of Consumers and Users pointed out that in one year, the average price of food has risen by 15.2 percent—pasta has risen 59.9 percent, olive oil 52.6 percent, wheat flour by 49.7 percent and eggs by 45.9 percent.

To the rise of food is added that of housing. According to real estate portal Fotocasa, rents in Spain have risen 41 percent between 2015 and 2021. But even more serious may be the rise in mortgages for those who have bought a home. The increases in interest rates that the European Central Bank is enforcing is increasing mortgage payments. The number of variable mortgages revalued annually has increased by 35 percent in September, which means about €180 more monthly cost for an average loan.

The situation was summed up by economist Elisabet Ruiz-Dotras, a professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) who told the daily El Pais: “We are at the beginning of something serious ... prices have risen a lot, and we notice it in the supermarket or electricity bills. If we add the rise in mortgage payments, there is little room left for families.”

That is also the opinion of many charity organisations dedicated to social assistance. The Red Cross expects to have to serve 400,000 more people this year, and Cáritas will spend 10 percent more money to serve the same people than in 2021, although they are aware that they will have many more requests.

The social catastrophe is yet another devastating exposure of the anti-working class policies and imperialist militarism of the pseudo-left Podemos party.

The PSOE-Podemos government claims it is addressing the situation in the 2023 budget, presented as Spain’s highest social expenditure in history. Podemos leader and Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz said: “They are General State Budgets that speak to working people, to those who have been worst hit.”

However, as the WSWS has noted, this is false. The increase in social spending is well below the level of inflation. The main budgetary increase is in defence spending, which will reach almost €27 billion, 2.17 percent of GDP, according to the pacifist Delàs Center for Peace Studies. It will even exceed NATO’s request to its members to reach 2 percent of GDP spent on defence. This is a clear support for NATO’s militaristic policy and its war against Russia in Ukraine.

Another important item of expenditure will be the €31 billion provided for the payment of interest on the public debt and which will end up in the hands of banks and large international investment funds. Compared to these figures, only €2.7 million will be spent on the Minimum Vital Income, the money aimed at preventing the risk of poverty and social exclusion, or the €3.4 million for the care of dependent people.

The working class must take stock and draw fundamental political conclusions. Three years in power, the PSOE-Podemos government’s promises have proven to be a fraud. Podemos is presiding over a social crisis on a scale not seen since the hunger years after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Meanwhile profits are soaring: in 2021, companies obtained a record net profit of €57 billion.

Mounting problems in Chinese economy will have global effects

Nick Beams

After a delay of a week, China statistics officials have released gross domestic product data for the third quarter, showing the economy grew by 3.9 percent over the year.

While this was higher than market expectations of 3.3 percent growth, it was well below the government target of 5.5 percent, itself the lowest rate in more than three decades.

A man wearing a protective mask walks in front of an electronic display board in the lobby of the Shanghai Stock Exchange building in Shanghai, China, Friday, Feb. 14, 2020. [AP Photo/AP Photo]

No official reason was given for the delay in the release of the data, but much commentary suggested it was because it would distract from the Chinese Communist Party congress held last week at which President Xi Jinping was given a third term as CCP leader.

The delay was accompanied by another surprise decision. Contrary to usual practice, the National Bureau of Statistics released the figures without holding a press conference to discuss the quarterly data.

The figures showed a series of mounting problems for the Chinese economy. Retail sales rose by only 2.5 percent, well below a forecast by Reuters of 3.3 percent.

Industrial production was up by 6.3 percent, better than expectations, and fixed investment increased by 5.9 percent over the first nine months of the year. However, the property market continued to contract under the impact of the unresolved financial problems of the giant developer Evergrande and other companies.

It has been estimated that property development accounts for more than 25 percent of the Chinese economy when its flow-on effects to other areas are considered. Property sales were down 22 percent, new construction starts have fallen by 38 percent and property investment has dropped 8 percent.

The conclusion is being drawn that the lower growth is not a conjunctural downturn but signifies a major shift in the Chinese economy. Some of the key issues were summed up in a blog post by Alex Brazier and Serena Jiang, two economists at the giant investment fund BlackRock.

As part of the international pressure on China from governments and financial interests to relax or even end its “zero COVID” policy, much of the blame for lower growth has been placed on public health measures instituted by Chinese authorities.

According to the BlackRock economists, the “big focus on Covid-related ups and downs in activity” ignores the more fundamental issues.

“The Chinese economy grew apace in the ten years prior to the pandemic, by 7.7 percent on average each year. But it now faces a set of acute challenges that … mean it is entering a stage of significantly slower growth.”

Covid controls were reducing potential economic output and, while they may be eased, the potential growth rate of the economy might have fallen to below 5 percent and could go even lower to just 3 percent by the end of the decade, they wrote.

Outlining the reasons, they continued: “Most importantly, the working age population, having grown rapidly is now shrinking. …Fewer workers mean the economy cannot produce as much without generating inflation, unless productivity growth accelerates.”

But that requires the development of new technologies which is being constricted by the sweeping restrictions imposed against China as part of the war preparations by the Biden administration.

Having crippled the tech giant Huawei, the US is extending the attack to the whole of the technology sector. These moves recall the oil embargo imposed on Japan in the late 1930s, which played a key role in sparking the war in the Pacific, part of World War II.

According to the BlackRock blog, “international trade and tech restrictions, as well as tighter regulations on companies operating in China, will dampen productivity growth.”

The growth slowdown, both in the short- and longer-term, will have a major effect on the global economy.

Drawing out the global implications of the shift in the Chinese economy, the BlackRock economists wrote: “In the past, when countries faced a slowdown, they could still rely on Chinese consumers and companies to buy up their cars, chemicals, machinery, fuel—even as consumers at home tightened their belts.”

And they could also rely on China to continue supplying an abundance of cheap products as the rapidly growing population enabled it to keep production costs low.

“Not so anymore. Recession is looming now for the US, UK and Europe. But this time, China won’t be coming to its own, or anyone else’s rescue,” they concluded.

The release of the GDP data coincided with a violent response in the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock markets on Monday to the consolidation of power by Xi and his appointment of his supporters to key posts.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Tech index fell 9.7 percent, its second-largest one-day fall, exceeded only by its slump in response to the 2008 financial crisis. Overall, the Hong Kong market dropped by more than 6 percent for the day.

The selloff extended to Wall Street where the NASDAQ Golden Dragon index, which tracks the shares of Chinese companies listed in the US, fell by a record 14.4 percent, leaving it down by around 50 percent so far this year.

In mainland China, markets fell by 3 percent and the renminbi dropped to a 14-year low against the US dollar.

The executive director of research at Kingston Securities, Dickie Wong, described the fall on the Hong Kong market as a “panic selling moment.” He attributed the fall to the Chinese CCP “leadership reshuffle and the tensions between China and the US” which continued to drag down sentiment and add to uncertainty.

The general response in the markets was that the appointments by Xi meant that he would continue with policies that were not “market friendly” under conditions where the key focus is on “national security” in response to the measures of the Biden administration.

The New York Times noted that in his opening address to the party congress on October 16, Xi mentioned security six times more than he referenced the economy.

Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal, a China-focused research firm, told the Times: “It is clear that before the party congress there had been a lot of wishful thinking in large swathes of the financial community that there would have been some kind of clear signal of commitment to the traditional liberal economic reform, and that has now been exposed as a delusion.”

The expected long-term decline in Chinese economic output as a result of the tech restrictions being imposed on it, and the immediate market selloff in response to the party congress, are both responses to the accelerated war drive against China by the US. As the recent National Security Strategy document makes clear, the US regards China as the greatest threat to its continued global dominance.

What is behind the pseudo-left’s renewed support for Lula in Brazil?

Tomas Castanheira

In one week, a second round of Brazil’s presidential elections will take place between current fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT).

Lining up with the most traditional representatives of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, the parties of the pseudo-left have expressed their support for the PT candidate. From the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) to the Stalinists of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and Popular Unity (UP), and the Morenoites of the Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU), all are calling for a vote for Lula on October 30.

Lula campaigning in Rio de Janeiro [Photo: Marcio Menasce]

Amid the explosion of the world capitalist crisis, growing social inequality and the deepest political crisis in Brazil in four decades, the pseudo-left’s support for the PT is a vote for the ruling class to intensify levels of exploitation and break the ability of the working class to resist.

The last four years of Bolsonaro’s administration have revealed that a dictatorial project has a fertile base of support in the bourgeoisie, the upper echelons of the state, and especially among the armed forces and the police.

Aided by these reactionary forces, Bolsonaro has attempted to cultivate a fascist movement politically associated with the military and the legacy of the brutal 1964-85 US-backed dictatorship in Brazil. He has made systematic advances against democratic forms of rule, including by preparing an electoral coup should he be defeated at the polls next Sunday.

The PT and Lula are incapable of even minimally confronting the mortal threats posed to the Brazilian working class. On the contrary, they represent and defend the same economic, social, and political system that produces mass misery and the destruction of democratic rights: capitalism.

Lula’s candidacy has as its main thrust the defense of the interests of the financial elite and big business under an explosive global scenario of economic recession and the drive to world war. The PT and its capitalist backers argue that Bolsonaro is responsible for “institutional instability” that is harmful to the business environment and repels international investors.

The incompatibility of these capitalist goals with the most basic interests of the working class prevents the PT from making any meaningful social appeal. Challenging Bolsonaro for support within the right-wing camp, Lula is competing with Bolsonaro over who best embodies the ideals of religion, the fatherland, and its military.

At the same time, through the trade union federations, the PT is cultivating instruments to defend capital and repress workers’ struggles in the workplaces.

In recent years, the unions have overseen the implementation of massive attacks on the working class in Brazil: job and wage cuts, plant closures, destruction of labor rights, and, most recently, the homicidal COVID-19 policies in the workplaces. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in the last decade more than a million industrial jobs were slashed and the average industrial worker’s salary was reduced from 3.5 to 3 minimum wages.

As the CUT and Força Sindical union federations explain in the “Industry Plan 10” that they presented as a program proposal for Lula’s potential government, their goal is not to promote struggles to achieve gains for the working class at the expense of the capitalist profits. On the contrary, they propose the creation of “multipartite” bodies—comprised of the companies, unions and the state—that will regulate labor power’s value in favor of the competitiveness of national capitalism.

These anti-worker organizations, “unions” in name only, update the tradition of corporatism, inaugurated in Brazil by Getúlio Vargas’ Estado Novo, that fostered a state-controlled unionism inspired by the police state model of the fascist trade unions.

The PT and the corporatist unions are not, in any real sense, workers’ organizations. Without a definitive break with them and their national-bourgeois political perspective, the Brazilian working class is unable to confront the increasing attacks on its living conditions and democratic rights.

The sabotage of this necessary political advance is the fundamental role played by the pseudo-left organizations. Faced with the global resurgence of class struggle, they desperately seek to sever the ties of Brazilian workers to the international working class and redirect them to the union bureaucracy and the bourgeois state.

The return of PSOL to PT’s coalition

In order to fully support a return of Lula to state power, the PSOL refused to launch its own presidential candidate for the first time in its history. Founded in 2004 by parliamentarians expelled from the PT for voting against an assault on pensions by Lula’s first administration, the party presented itself over the last two decades as the official “left opposition” to the PT.

The distinctive political trait of the PSOL was its explicit denial of the relevance of the working class in modern society and the promotion of middle-class identity politics in vogue in the universities. As a result, the party has forged itself as a central instrument for the current right-wing shift of the ruling class.

Adapting itself to the fascist moods resurging in bourgeois politics, in the 2020 elections the PSOL launched dozens of candidates from police and military backgrounds and allied itself locally with far-right parties such as the Christian Social Party (PSC). Guilherme Boulos, who ran in 2018 as the PSOL’s presidential candidate, used his platform, this time running in the second round for mayor of São Paulo, to call for an “anti-Bolsonaro front” that would attract “sectors of the old Brazilian right.”

In 2021, the PSOL acted alongside the PT to disorient mass demonstrations that exploded in opposition to the Bolsonaro government’s homicidal COVID-19 policies. They sought to transform the protests into mere instruments for the consolidation of their alliance with the right. PSOL president Juliano Medeiros attacked as “sectarian voices” anyone outraged at being forced to march alongside right-wing parties like the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).

These criminal political services earned Medeiros and Boulos a prominent position in organizing Lula’s campaign and negotiating with the right-wing politicians and capitalist associations that gave him support.

The rapid lurch by the PSOL to the right exposes, above all, the various Pabloite tendencies—longtime renegades from Trotskyism—that claimed that the PSOL would be a vehicle for building socialist politics in Brazil.

Among such tendencies are different supporters of the Pabloite Unified Secretariat; the Morenoites of the International Workers Unity (IWU-FI), the International Socialist League (ISL) and the Trotskyist Fraction (FT-CI); and the “state capitalists” of the International Socialist Alternative (ISA) and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).

Some of these tendencies concluded that the PSOL’s blunt support for Lula since the first round undermined its false image of “political independence” with which they seek to sell themselves to youth and workers seeking an alternative to capitalism. In response, they declared support and launched their candidates through the PSTU-led electoral front, named “Revolutionary Socialist Pole.”

The “Revolutionary Socialist Pole”: a new fraudulent alternative of the pseudo-left

On its website Esquerda Diário, the Revolutionary Workers Movement (MRT) promoted the “Revolutionary Socialist Pole” as a political front that stands for “class independence.” They claimed that it would fulfill a central role for the “necessary process of reorganization of the Brazilian left in the face of the even greater challenges ahead.”

The idea that the PSTU and its “Revolutionary Socialist Pole” stand for the political independence of the working class is yet another fraud promoted by the Morenoites of MRT. For the past seven years, the MRT called for building the PSOL, claiming that it would fulfill the same role they attribute to the PSTU today.

Despite its title, “A socialist program for Brazil!” the electoral program presented by the PSTU in the current elections revealed their clear orientation to the bourgeoisie and its state. In one of its points, they state: “We defend democratic liberties, but not bourgeois democracy. We will only defend that regime in the event of an attempted military coup.”

The idea that the threat of a fascist coup can be countered by defending Brazil’s rotting “bourgeois democracy” is radically contrary to the tradition of Trotskyism. Trotsky directly linked the crisis of bourgeois democratic forms of rule to the deadly crisis of the capitalist system itself, and explained that it could only be confronted through the international socialist revolution.

Attacking the same program advocated by the PSTU today, Trotsky wrote in 1929: “Democracy stands or falls with capitalism. By defending a democracy which has outlived itself, Social Democracy drives social development into the blind alley of fascism.”

The anti-Trotskyist position presented by the PSTU is not just a theoretical slip. It is firmly based on the reactionary tradition of Morenoism upon which it stands. That was precisely the criminal policy supported by Nahuel Moreno and his Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT) on the eve of the bloody 1976 military coup in Argentina.

By publicly supporting the right-wing government of Isabel Perón and the formal bourgeois democracy established by the Argentine ruling class in 1973 through its “process of institutionalization,” Moreno’s PRT acted to disarm the working class and pave the way for the fascist military coup.

Consistent with this reactionary program, the PSTU appealed resolutely to the repressive apparatus of the ruling class in the elections. “It is also necessary to have policy for the armed sectors of the state,” it declared in the program it presents as “socialist.” The PSTU has run military police officers as its candidates, among them Sergeant Guimarães for congressman, and even for state governor of Espírito Santo, Captain Sousa.

The reactionary defense of the bourgeois state by the PSTU springs not only from its own political history but also from its material bonds to the corporatist unions, which confront the effects of capitalist globalization with a bankrupt nationalist perspective.

Throughout the 26 pages of its program, the PSTU argues that the crisis faced by Brazilian workers should be solved through the “defense of sovereignty and a break with imperialism.” According to the PSTU, it is not world capitalism that faces a mortal crisis, but “the country [that] is in decay due to the rule of the multinationals,” which force Brazil to “have its economic center determined by the world market.”

In other words, imperialist capitalism does not need to be confronted through the unification of the global working class under the perspective of international socialism. Countries like Brazil can simply “break” from imperialism and develop their economies separately from the world market. This is a shameless replay of the Stalinist policy of socialism in one country, which Trotsky defined as a “reactionary utopia.” It is 10 times more reactionary today in the face of the profound integration achieved by the global productive forces.

This reactionary ideology reflects the PSTU’s practice in the unions it controls. In 2020, the party promoted through the Metalworkers Union of São José dos Campos a chauvinist campaign titled “Embraer for the Brazilians. Re-stratification now,” which brought together the main leaderships of bourgeois parties like the PT and the Democratic Labor Party (PDT), and appealed to the supporters of “national sovereignty” within the Brazilian military. They argued against the sale of the company, which manufactures commercial and military aircraft, to the US-based Boeing on the grounds of defending the “strategic interests of the Brazilian nation.”

The very essence of this nationalist program is, in fact, the quest for an accommodation to imperialism. This is demonstrated by the unconditional alignment of the International Workers League (IWL-FI), which has the PSTU as its main section, to the “strategic interests” of US imperialism in the global arena.

Fervently supporting US-NATO in its proxy war against Russia over Ukraine, the IWL-FI dismisses the threats of a nuclear exchange and demands “taking the war until the end.” It declares in one of its statements: “We believe that it is absolutely correct to mobilize to demand that the governments (especially the imperialist countries) give the Ukrainian resistance arms and all the necessary materials (ammunition, food, medicine) directly and unconditionally.”

Ebola infections take hold in Uganda’s capital Kampala

Benjamin Mateus

After assuring the press last week that Uganda’s densely populated capital remained Ebola-free and that the outbreak would be rolled back and wiped out by the year’s end, Health Minister Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng tweeted on Monday that the case count in Kampala had risen sharply to 14 after nine more people who had been under quarantine were confirmed with Sudan Ebola virus infection.

Aceng wrote, “Yesterday, October 23, 2022, nine individuals were confirmed positive for Ebola in Greater Kampala region [all under quarantine at Mulago hospital], bringing the total number of cases to 14 in the last 8 hours. The nine cases are contacts of the fatal case which came from Kassanda district and passed on in Mulago hospital.”

She added, “[These are] seven family members from Masanafu and one health worker who managed him [the deceased] in a private clinic together with his wife from Seguku [who was confirmed a day after giving birth]. Fellow Ugandans let’s be vigilant. Report yourself if you have had contact or know of a person who has had contact. Let’s cooperate to end Ebola.”

As for the first five cases confirmed 48 hours previously at the Mulago isolation unit, they have been transferred to the Entebbe Ebola Treatment Unit located 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the capital on the shore of Lake Victoria. They were among 60 people in isolation after exposure to known Ebola cases.

Although Mubende and Kassanda, the two districts in central Uganda at the epicenter of the current outbreak, were placed under a three-week lockdown, it remains to be seen if such necessary control measures will be implemented in the capital.

According to the Ugandan independent daily newspaper The Daily Monitor, cumulative confirmed cases have reached 84 in the country as of October 24, 2022. Adding the probable cases raises the figure to over 90 cases since the declaration of the outbreak on September 20.

As for the death toll, there have been at least 44 fatalities (28 confirmed), bringing the case fatality rate of confirmed cases between 30 to 50 percent. Among recent deaths is another health care worker, Dr. John Grace Walugembe, a laboratory technician at Mubende Regional Referral Hospital, who died last Sunday, raising the number of medical personnel succumbing to the Ebola infection to five.

Twenty-six people, including six health care workers, have recovered and have been discharged. However, the number of contacts has risen to at least 2,007 individuals, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Of these, 931 (46 percent) have completed the 21 days of follow-up, the incubation time for Ebola infection.

However, the World Health Organization (WHO) noted that at least eight confirmed Ebola cases have no known links with current cases. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters, “We remain concerned that there may be more chains of transmission and more contacts than we know about in the affected communities.”

Map of Ebola outbreak in Uganda and affected districts. [Photo: European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention]

The recent report of a confirmed Ebola infection in a female patient who fell ill and was being treated at a hospital in Mityana district, east of Kassanda, exemplifies the concerns raised by the WHO on the complex chains of infection. The patient’s mother had died a week prior inside a shrine and was buried in the Madudu subcounty in Mubende district. The infected woman’s child had also recently passed away at Manyi health center in Mityana district, raising suspicions of Ebola. The health workers who were in attendance have been isolated while health authorities attempt to trace all the contacts of this particular case.

Additionally, the recognition of Ebola cases in Kampala has raised the dial on the ECDC’s risk assessment for the European Union (EU) citizens living and traveling in the country. Before cases were confirmed in Kampala, they wrote that the current risk remains low in “the absence of transmission in densely populated areas (e.g., the capital city of Kampala).” They added, however, a cautionary note, “An increase in cases and, most importantly, the occurrence of chains of transmissions in populated areas and cities … would increase the likelihood of exposure of EU/EEA [European Economic Activity] citizens to Ebola virus.”

The treatment centers in Uganda are presently treating 19 active cases. In their effort to fight Ebola across the country, the government has set out to reinforce its public health complement by recruiting more than 1,000 health care workers from every sector of the field, including epidemiologists, physicians, pediatricians, laboratory technicians, health inspectors, psychologists and social workers.

Aceng told The Daily Monitor, “We are recruiting 1,490 additional staff, not only for Kampala but to support the entire response. This is in addition to those that are already in the system. Currently, we have many mobile laboratories which are ready for deployment and expect more from our partners. Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI) is training more than 20 laboratory people that will be able to handle these laboratories.”

On top of the two isolation centers in and around the capital—Mulago hospital, with a capacity for 120 people, and Entebbe hospital, which can take in 62 patients—the government will build another isolation unit on the playground at Mulago Dental School that will accommodate 60 people. Construction was to commence on Monday and be ready by one month’s time, equipped with “all the amenities so that it operates like a full hospital,” said Aceng.

According to the US CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the WHO are expediting the “fill and finish” of around 8,000 doses of the Sabin Vaccine Institute experimental vaccine to be deployed as part of a clinical trial in Uganda.

Meanwhile, the Serum Institute of India is planning to manufacture up to 30,000 doses of Oxford’s Ebola vaccine, which has been shown to induce an immune response in both the Sudan and Zaire strains in their phase one trials. These are expected to be available by the end of November.

Most recently, there have been attempts to downplay the dangers of the deadly epidemic. Commenting on the “rapidly evolving” outbreak of Ebola in Uganda, the United Nations health agency’s regional director for Africa, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, stated last week, “The Ministry of Health of Uganda has shown remarkable resilience and effectiveness and [is] constantly fine-tuning a response to what is a challenging situation.”

Dr. Ahmed Ogwell, the acting head of the Africa CDC, said at another press conference last Thursday, “[The Ebola] numbers that we are seeing do pose a risk for spread within the country and its neighbors.” But, as to the risk of cross-border contamination, he added, “it’s a manageable risk” and not one that presently requires a “full emergency mode.”

Yet, the predicted emergence of Ebola in Kampala raises the threat that the virus could become more enmeshed in dense human populations and break out to neighboring countries and continents. The experience with the 2014-16 outbreak that began in a small village in Guinea in December 2013 has significant parallels to the current outbreak in Uganda.

By March 2014, the Zaire ebolavirus had spread to the country’s capital city, Conakry, a city with 1.66 million inhabitants. By the summer, the virus was present in its neighboring countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone. On August 8, 2014, the WHO declared the deteriorating situation in West Africa a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Before the epidemic was contained and Guinea was declared Ebola-free in June 2016, two and a half years after the first case was discovered, 28,652 confirmed and probable cases were reported, with 11,325 deaths. Besides small outbreaks in Nigeria and Mali and one case in Senegal, three countries in Europe—Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom—each had one case, while the United States had four cases either after exposure in West Africa or in a health care setting.

Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, with the imminent collapse of public health infrastructure, rising geopolitical tensions over the growing conflict in Ukraine and a resultant global economic crisis, concerns are mounting over the genuine threat posed by the sudden emergence on the world stage of a far deadlier pathogen than SARS-CoV-2 and monkeypox and the refusal of governments to adequately prepare or respond to it.

Three dead, six injured in St. Louis, Missouri school shooting, fortieth in the US this year

Cordell Gascoigne

A shooting Monday morning at the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School (CVPA) in St. Louis, Missouri left two people dead—a health teacher and a student—along with six wounded. The gunman was killed by police.

Police investigate the scene of a shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School Monday, Oct. 24, 2022, in St. Louis. [AP Photo/Jeff Roberson]

The teacher has been identified as 61-year-old Jean Kuczka, the student as Alexis Bell, and the shooter as 19-year-old Orlando Harris, a graduate of the school the year prior.

An active shooter call was placed to 911 where officers were notified of a man with a “long gun,” according to St. Louis Police Commissioner Mike Sack, inside the CVPA high school. Police arrived at 9:10 a.m. and entered the school where a firefight soon ensued, fatally wounding the suspect.

“While on paper we might have nine victims, eight who were transported and one remained, we have hundreds of others,” Sack said at the news conference. “Everyone who survived here is going to take home trauma.”

One survivor, mathematics teacher David Williams, reported Harris made the declaration, “You’re all going to fucking die!” Another reported the gunman having said he was “tired of everybody.”

Adrianne Bolden, a freshman, recounted his experiences to NBC News, explaining that he and his classmates initially thought an intruder drill was activated. However, upon hearing police sirens outside the building they realized it was no drill. “The teacher, she crawled over and she was asking for help to move the lockers to the door so they can’t get in,” he said.

Bolden continued, “[W]e had to wait a little longer before the assistant principal came up to one of the windows that was locked, and when we opened it, the teacher said to ‘come on’ and we all had to jump out of the window.” To escape the gunman, Bolden and his classmates jumped out of a window, risking sprained ankles or broken bones.

Another student, 16-year-old Taniya Gholston, told the St. Louis Police Dispatch, “All I heard was two shots and he came in there with a gun,” continuing ,“And I was trying to run and I couldn’t run. Me and him made eye contact but I made it out because his gun got jammed. But we saw blood on the floor.”

Another survivor, teacher Michael de Filippo, also reported, “Once you heard the boom, all the chuckling and laughing in the back of the room stopped.”

According to Sack, the doors at the school were locked, but did not elaborate on how Harris was able to enter. Sack said security guards were able to quickly alert cops who arrived within minutes with officers entering the school with “no hesitation,” engaging the suspect with gunfire, drawing a contrast to the 376 law enforcement officers that refused to engage 18-year-old Uvalde, Texas, elementary school gunman Salvador Ramos as he killed 19 children and two teachers.

During a news conference, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, a Democrat, issued the typical hollow words of a pre-written script regarding the school shooting, an all too familiar phenomenon in the United States, saying it was “a devastating and traumatic situation.”

Jones continued her remarks, saying, “Our children shouldn’t have to experience this; they shouldn’t have to go through active shooter drills in case something happens. And unfortunately, that happened today.”

The shooting at CVPA High School is the fortieth school shooting this year. According to Education Week, 2022 holds the record for most school shootings in a single year since the news organization began recording data in 2018. From January 2009 to May 2018, the United States experienced 288 school shootings.

As the days go on, the statistics become ever more harrowing. Since the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre in Littleton, Colorado, more than 311,000 students have experienced gun violence in school. Thirty-two were killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech University shootings in Blacksburg, Virginia, 26 in during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, 17 in 2018 at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and 19 children aged from 9 to 11 were gunned down along with two teachers, this year at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. These are but the deadliest school shootings over the past three decades.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, 2022 has tallied 36,154 deaths as a result of firearm: 16,552 by homicide and 19,602 by suicide. From 1999 to 2017, the CDC reported a 33 percent increase in suicides and in 2020, “the firearm homicide rate increased nearly 35 [percent], reaching its highest level since 1994...”