The ruthless official policy of opening up the economy at both the federal and state level has led to a huge increase in infection rates throughout Germany. On Friday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 17,482 new infections, about 4,600 more than a week ago. Two-hundred-and-twenty-six people died of COVID-19. On Saturday, the seven-day incidence rate rose to over 100 per 100,000 people, the highest level since the beginning of February. A week ago, the incidence rate was 69.1.
There has been a particularly dramatic increase in the federal states where the Left Party participates in the state administration. The premier of the state of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, is a leading member of the Left Party, and Thuringia currently leads the way nationwide for infections, with a seven-day incidence rate of 201.
The state of Saxony is in second place, with an incidence rate of 134. In Bremen and Berlin, where the Left Party rules in coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, the seven-day incidence rates are 97 and over 100, respectively, according to the RKI.
Classroom in Dortmund, Germany, August 13, 2020 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
Infection rates and deaths are also rising rapidly in these three federal states. On Saturday, the RKI reported 867 new infections in Thuringia, 893 in Berlin and 107 in Bremen. This means that a total of 86,588 people have been infected with the coronavirus in Thuringia, 137,918 in Berlin and 19,526 in Bremen. According to the RKI, the number of deaths has risen to 3,188 (Thuringia), 2,984 (Berlin) and 391 (Bremen).
These numbers will continue to explode over the next few days, with leading virologists warning of a further round of mass fatalities, with some 1,000 coronavirus deaths per day over the Easter holidays in a week’s time. These casualties are a direct result of the federal government’s reopening policy, which is also being aggressively pursued by the Left Party. In recent weeks, in common with all other governing parties and against the vast preponderance of scientific advice, the Left Party has systematically reopened schools and scaled back pandemic protection measures.
In Bremen, primary school pupils were forced to return to in-person teaching on 1 March. From the fifth grade upwards, pupils study in alternate classes wearing masks, but this has not stopped the rapid spread of the virus. With an average class size in Germany of 18 children, there are still nine children per class, with teachers moving back and forth between classes, meaning they are both potential carriers and potential victims of the virus.
In Berlin, classes for grades one to six and 10 to 13 have been attending school in alternate classes since 17 March, and day-care centres have been open without restrictions for at least seven hours a day since 9 March. Only classes for grades seven to nine have not yet resumed in the German capital. According to the mayor of Berlin, Michael Müller (SPD), this is due to take place immediately after the Easter holidays.
In Thuringia, the end of the lockdown for schools and day-care centres was enforced in several stages. Since 22 February, grades one to four have been back in school. On 1 March, all other grades followed. Officially, this was described as a “limited regular operation,” but this is no more than window dressing. Despite the high incidence of infection, the state government is putting pupils, teachers and their families at greater risk.
On 12 March, the Left Party-led health and education ministries once again expanded the scope for easing lockdown measures and have since recommended closing schools and kindergartens only when the incidence rate reaches 150. In other words, even in the case of a sharp increase in infections that far exceeds the official coronavirus emergency figure of 50 or 100, districts can decide in consultation with the state to keep schools open or reopen them.
In the district of Schmalkalden-Meiningen, for example, where the incidence rate is over 300, schools are to open on 22 March. The district office announced Thursday evening that children in grades one to six will be able to attend school. Home schooling could “not be a permanent solution,” declared district administrator Peggy Greiser, explaining the decision. Greiser, who ran as a candidate for the SPD and the Left Party in 2018, is quoted by Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk as saying, “There has to be an end at some point to the permanent burden placed on working parents.”
In fact, Greiser’s overriding concern is not to ease the burden on parents, but rather to ensure their ability to work. In order to secure corporate profits and underwrite the gigantic sums in the form of emergency coronavirus aid handed out to the financial oligarchy by the German government, with the support of the Left Party, parents are to work and their children are to go to school despite the spread of the deadly pandemic. This is taking place under conditions where even a rudimentary testing capacity is lacking, let alone an effective vaccination programme.
In a revealing comment, Thuringia’s education minister, Helmut Holter (Left Party), went on record to reveal that his government had not even ordered long-promised coronavirus tests. “If we want to have the tests in schools and kindergartens, then the state must procure them now,” he said. “For that we need the money and central logistics.” He warned that any hesitation would mean “we will be without tests after Easter.”
The policy of the Left Party is an integral part of the murderous strategy of the entire ruling class. Following the last federal-state summit on coronavirus policy, Ramelow explicitly spoke out in favour of “talking about herd immunity.”
Last autumn, he praised the “Swedish model,” thereby underlining the basic unity of the supposedly “left” bourgeois policies with the openly right-wing parties in pursuing a policy that knowingly sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives by rejecting measures, including serious lockdowns, that infringe on the economic interests of the capitalist ruling elite.
After seven weeks of steady declines in COVID-19 cases coming off the winter surge, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning of a steady rise in new cases globally over the past five weeks.
The week beginning March 15 saw 3.28 million new cases, up from 2.49 million the week of February 15, just one month ago. This is equivalent to 100,000 new cases per day globally.
In five of six regions of the world—the Americas, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Pacific—cases have been rising. The number of new infections across the African continent has plateaued at high daily rates.
In a word, the spring surge is well underway.
Demonstrators protest the president's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic outside Planalto presidential palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, March 19, 2021. The signs read in Portuguese "Almost 300,000 dead. Bolsonaro genocide", left, and "Vaccinations save lives." (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Even more concerning is the fact that the weekly decline in deaths due to COVID-19 has ceased, and deaths are now on the upturn. After a low of 59,000 deaths worldwide the week beginning March 8, the death count for the week beginning March 15 has increased to over 60,000 and is still climbing. The WHO has confirmed that since the beginning of the pandemic just over a year ago there have been more than 22.5 million COVID-19 cases globally and over 2.7 million deaths.
The pandemic has led to a massive loss of jobs in low- and middle-income countries, threatening hundreds of millions of people with hunger and homelessness, on top of illness and death. A report published in Science Advances in February found startling levels of income loss, with 70 percent of households across nine countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America reporting financial losses, forcing millions of people to eat smaller meals or skip them entirely.
According to Edward Miguel, a University of California, Berkeley economist, “in the early months of the pandemic, the economic downturn in low- and middle-income countries was almost certainly worse than any other recent global economic crisis that we know of, whether the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, the Great Recession that started in 2008 or the more recent Ebola crisis. The economic costs were just severe, absolutely severe.”
Vaccine nationalism has exacerbated the pandemic. As of March 21, close to 440 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine had been administered worldwide, equivalent to 5.7 doses for every 100 persons. However, the distribution of these lifesaving medications has been inequitable and chaotic.
The lion’s share of vaccines has been administered in the United States, with 124.5 million shots-in-the-arm reported, or 28 percent of all vaccines given globally. The United States accounts for only 4.25 percent of the world population.
The US has provided at least one dose of a vaccine to 38 percent of its people so far. The seven-day average stands at around 2.6 million per day.
By comparison, Europe, which has been struggling with issues related to production and distribution, and more recently concerns over AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, has managed to inoculate only 13 out of 100 persons with at least one dose.
In the latest tally, most of the world has yet to see a COVID-19 vaccine, and, by all accounts, may not until well into next year. According to the New York Times, residents of wealthy and middle-income countries have received about 90 percent of all the vaccines so far delivered.
Low-income countries have asked the WHO to help them procure these lifesaving vaccines and provide scientific and technological support to build vaccine manufacturing capacity in their countries. The US, the UK and the EU have resisted such measures.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned that she was ready to introduce emergency controls on COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution to “ensure that Europeans are vaccinated as soon as possible.” She even threatened to invoke Article 122 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, allowing it to use emergency measures to secure the necessary vaccine stocks, further exacerbating the overall scarcity of supplies and their highly unequal distribution.
US President Joe Biden has repeatedly stated his intention to vaccinate the American population first. “We’re going to start off making sure Americans are taken care of first,” he said recently. “But we’re then going to try and help the rest of the world.”
The second part of his statement is nothing more than diplomatic jargon. The US will use its stranglehold on vaccine intellectual properties and production capacity as a lever in pursuing the geo-political and profit interests of the American corporate elite against nominal friends and foes alike. In particular, it will be used to prosecute its aggressive policies against China and Russia and the demand that its European and Asian “allies” line up behind its effort to maintain US global hegemony.
The pandemic has become a weapon in the hands of the ruling elites. Presently, the pandemic’s epicenter is Brazil. Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s fascistic president, is essentially conducting a laboratory experiment in which the dangerous P.1 variant rampages throughout the country, while he tells the population to “stop whining” about COVID-19.
Brazil has recorded 12 million cases of COVID-19 and is rapidly approaching 300,000 deaths, the last 100,000 of these having occurred since the beginning of 2021. Official death tolls of more than 2,700 a day are in reality vast undercounts, as people die at home while health systems collapse, unable to handle the flood of new COVID-19 patients. The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), a public health research institution, has warned, “Brazil is experiencing a historic collapse of its health services as intensive care units in hospitals run out of capacity.”
India is in the early stage of a second wave. Cases are rapidly accelerating as new, more virulent strains appear. With more than 47,000 new cases of COVID-19 reported Saturday, infections have increased nearly fivefold from just a month ago. This has been accompanied by a rise in the daily death toll. Active cases have risen in 29 of the 36 Indian states. There have been 400 cases of virulent variants detected in India, with 158 reported in just the last two weeks.
With the spring surge, in part attributable to the B.1.1.7 variant, gaining momentum across Europe, several countries have imposed new restrictions.
French Prime Minister Jean Castex placed about one-third of the population—some 21 million people in 16 regions of the country, including Paris—under lockdown, in the face of surging infections. Last week, the number of people in intensive care units reached over 4,200, the highest level since November. Daily cases of COVID-19 stand at more than 35,000.
Germany’s seven-day-average is accelerating, having climbed to over 12,000 cases per day, and the death toll has stopped declining. Chancellor Angela Merkel noted in a press conference that an “emergency brake” likely needs to be applied and lockdown measures re-imposed. The health minister said that Europe lacked the vaccines required to significantly reduce cases.
Poland and Ukraine have re-imposed lockdown measures as new cases near their previous peaks from November. Health systems are once more being battered.
The Czech Republic, where cases had been dropping, is reporting numerous cases of multi-system inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C). Without proper treatment, this condition can cause severe organ damage and even failure, leading to death. Additionally, the repeated imposition and lifting of restrictions is heightening social tensions. Demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions are flaring in several European cities, including Amsterdam.
The US remains in a precarious position, where the daily case count has stabilized at around 55,000. The daily death toll continues to decline, but remains at a seven-day moving average of more than 1,000. However, several regions of the country are experiencing new surges in cases, even as the Biden administration touts the “success” of its vaccination campaign.
The seven-day moving average in New York State is over 7,000 per day and has held steady for a month; the positivity rate has not dipped below 6 percent in months.
Cases in New Jersey have been steadily rising since February 25. Rhode Island is slowly trending upwards, while Massachusetts has plateaued at around 1,600 cases a day. Florida is holding steady at 5,000 cases per day. Michigan, however, has seen a dramatic rise in cases.
Many health experts warn that even as the race to vaccinate Americans continues, if proper safety and mitigation measures are not followed, the US could see a resurgence of COVID-19 infections. Scenes of vacationers and spring break revelers in Miami Beach over the weekend raise significant concerns that the situation threatens to become explosive.
An unprecedented human exodus is underway across the Americas, as 2 million people—nearly a 10th of the population of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala—are expected to flee to the United States in the coming months. The US government has responded by closing its doors, abolishing the right to asylum and detaining 15,000 unaccompanied children as lawbreakers. This is the brutal, irrational response of the capitalist system to human suffering on a mass scale.
The corporate media and political establishment have launched a campaign to force the Biden administration to take even harsher measures against the asylum seekers. Typical is a headline in the Bezos-owned Washington Post attacking what it called “the Biden administration’s failure to contain the border surge.”
Though millions of voters hoped that by supporting Biden they could undo Trump’s fascistic attack on immigrants, the new administration is only continuing the ex-president’s policies. Biden’s secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) threatened migrants on ABC’s “This Week,” telling Martha Raddatz: “The message is quite clear, do not come. The border is closed, the border is secure.”
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicle is seen next to migrants after they were detained and taken into custody, Sunday, March 21, 2021, in Abram-Perezville, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
There is bipartisan agreement on jailing children, separating them from their families, militarizing the border and carrying out mass deportations, but there is never any discussion in the complacent media about the root causes of the social collapse of the Northern Triangle countries. The poverty and violence that dominate Central America are portrayed as the product of some unhappy accident.
The fact is that American imperialism is guilty of sociocide, and that millions are escaping a nightmare that was made in the USA. The American ruling class has systematically destroyed Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador for over a century, plundering the natural resources, exploiting the labor power of the working class, hoarding the land, starving the population, bankrupting the public treasury, and enriching itself all the while.
The governments that presently run each country have their roots in police state dictatorships imposed by the United States to enforce the diktats of American corporations and crush social opposition across the hemisphere.
For roughly two decades after the Great Depression, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras were ruled by dictators who carried out routine massacres of workers and peasants on behalf of the United Fruit Company. In 1932, El Salvador’s fascistic President Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez slaughtered 40,000 peasants engaged in an insurrection against US corporations and local landowners led by Agustin Farabundo Marti. Guatemala’s Jorge Ubico was an admirer of Hitler and a close ally of the US and United Fruit.
Eduardo Galeano characterized the decades of dictatorship that followed in his book Open Veins of Latin America:
The world turned its back while Guatemala underwent a long Saint Bartholomew’s night. [In 1967,] all the men of the village of Cajón del Rio were exterminated; those of Tituque had their intestines gouged out with knives; in Piedra Parada they were flayed alive; in Agua Blanca de Ipala they were burned alive after being shot in the legs. A rebellious peasant’s head was stuck on a pole in the center of San Jorge’s plaza. In Cerro Gordo the eyes of Jaime Velázquez were filled with pins… In the cities, the doors of the doomed were marked with black crosses. Occupants were machine gunned as they emerged, their bodies thrown into ravines.
In the 1970s and 80s, the United States transformed Central America into an even larger mass grave, using Honduras as a staging ground for efforts to crush the Sandinista National Liberation Front in neighboring Nicaragua, with death squads deployed to carry out genocidal war.
The US supported, trained and armed the dictatorships in El Salvador and Guatemala. In the course of El Salvador’s civil war, 80,000 were killed and a million displaced in the scorched earth campaign against the Farabundo Martà National Liberation Front. In just one year from 1982-83, Guatemala’s US-backed dictator Efrain Rios Montt killed 75,000 people in a genocidal campaign against the indigenous. In 1982, Ronald Reagan met Montt, defended his actions and called him “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.”
This litany of crimes against humanity is not merely a thing of the past. In 2009, the Obama administration orchestrated a coup of the elected Honduran government led by Manuel Zelaya, who presented him as a social reformist and an ally of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Documents released in 2017 via a Freedom of Information Act request reveal high-level involvement of the US military and State Department, which was led at the time by Hillary Clinton. Roughly one week after the Honduran military frog-marched Zelaya out of the country in his pajamas, Clinton wrote the US embassy in Honduras with her approval to “engage elements of the Honduran Armed Forces and de facto regime.” The Honduran regime implemented a brutal regime of austerity measures, murdered activists like Berta Caceres and today continues to operate in a thinly-veiled alliance with powerful drug cartels.
The United States is preparing further crimes, with US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Admiral Craig Faller telling the press in December that US imperialism’s “competitive edge [in Latin America]...is eroding, particularly when it comes to the Chinese influence.” Fuller declared the US would remain an active presence in Latin America in order to force China to “play by global rules.”
As a result of a century of imperialist exploitation, Central America is the most unequal region in the world. Sixty percent of Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans live beneath their countries’ measly poverty line. Seventy percent of the population is only informally employed. Ten to 20 percent of the region does not have access to electricity. A quarter of the population is illiterate. Remittances from relatives in the United States account for roughly one sixth of the total GDP. Hundreds of thousands of workers toil in sweatshops producing textiles for export for US apparel corporations supplying retailers like Walmart, Macy’s and Kohl’s.
The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged Central America, sending millions deeper into poverty and leading the United Nations to warn of widespread starvation across the region. The virus initially spread because the US deported many who were infected in immigration detention. While the US hoards vaccinations, hospitals are overwhelmed and testing is so inadequate that case and death numbers are vastly underreported.
Masses of Central American workers, peasants and small business owners are evacuating themselves from this social hellscape at great personal risk. They deserve every class conscious worker’s sympathy and support. The exodus is an indication that masses of people are coming to the realization that life cannot continue in the old way, and that the social needs of billions of people cannot be met within the framework of the capitalist system and the restraints of national boundaries.
In this leaked conversation of October 21, 2019, Cecilia Morel, the first lady and wife of the richest man in Chile, President Sebastián Piñera, gives a sense of the overriding fear that gripped the ruling class with the massive social explosion beginning that month. One gets the impression that she felt her Marie Antoinette moment had come, that the days of obscene privilege of the Piñeras and their class were numbered.
The mobilizations formed part of an eruption of the global class struggle, illustrating that the enemy of the working masses is one and the same financial and corporate capitalist elite. From Chile to Lebanon, Iraq, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador, across Europe, Asia and the United States, millions upon millions have taken to the streets over the last two years against wanton death caused by capitalism’s criminal response to a deadly pandemic, as well as years of social inequality, poverty, the threat of fascism and dictatorship and ever-growing police-state violence.
Surrounded by military personnel from the Santiago garrison, Sebastian Piñera declared "we are at war" on national television (credit: Presidencia de Chile) Gen. Augusto Pinochet signs dictatorial decree in 1973
Despite the immensity and potential of the protests, demonstrations and strikes that shook Chile in 2019, the working class has been unable at this point to pose a revolutionary alternative to capitalism. This is fundamentally due to the political domination of the nationalist left, beginning with the Communist Party (PCCh), the pseudo-left Frente Amplio coalition, the Socialist Party and its countless satellite tendencies and organizations.
Amid the greatest crisis of bourgeois rule since the revolutionary period of 1968–73 and the growing danger of police-state dictatorship, the Chilean “left”—through its control of the union apparatus, domination of social and community organizations and posts in the municipal and regional governments and the national Congress—played a decisive role in saving capitalism.
As in the 1970s, the task fell to the Chilean Stalinists to lead this campaign. Having broken with revolutionary Marxism very early in its existence, the PCCh has remained wedded to the Stalinist interwar “Popular Front” and the Menshevik “two-stage” theories, which advanced a national and parliamentary road and the formation of coalitions with the native bourgeoisie.
Part and parcel of this ideology is their promotion of national exceptionalism, which claims that Chile has democratic traditions and adheres to constitutional norms. This specious theory was used throughout the 20th century to deny the necessity of the working class taking up a socialist and internationalist revolutionary struggle against capitalism. The PCCh’s primary function has been to sow illusions in parliamentary democracy.
This political straitjacket proved decisive in allowing the debilitated Piñera regime to remain in power, recalibrate and lay the groundwork for dictatorial rule.
How the pseudo-left saved Piñera
In November 2019, the Chilean “left” accepted Piñera’s call for “national unity” talks. The meaning of national unity became clear during the pandemic when the Congress rubber-stamped pro-business policies. The union apparatus implemented these policies, forcing the export-oriented sectors back to work, helping impose wage cuts, agreeing to the furloughing of hundreds of thousands of workers and refusing to call any industrial action against poverty, hunger, insecurity and evictions impacting the working class.
Amid hunger riots, wildcat strikes and protests against continued police murders, torture and mutilations ,the parliamentary left channeled popular anger into toothless appeals to reform the virtually autonomous, militarized Carabineros. A few symbolic human rights cases that were permitted to proceed through the courts were cynically exploited by the pseudo-left to sow illusions in the institutions of the bourgeois state.
They also initiated parliamentary proceedings against the police director, the interior minister, the health minister and even Piñera, knowing full well that the right and centre parties in Congress would quash these actions.
The most significant political operation orchestrated by the pseudo-left was the year-long referendum campaign to overturn the 1980 authoritarian constitution and to promote illusions in the election this April of a Constituent Assembly, whose function will be to draft a new constitution.
Unlike all the other machinations, this gargantuan effort has proved temporarily effective from the standpoint of blinding the working class to the preparations being made for dictatorship.
On the day of the referendum last October 25, Piñera said, “Until now, the Constitution has divided us. As of today, we should all collaborate in making the new constitution a symbol of unity and stability.”
In one way or another, this cynical lie was echoed by the entire pseudo-left. “Today we are celebrating a great triumph of the sovereign people … and a new historical and democratic cycle for our country,” said Frente Amplio Senator Juan Ignacio Latorre. “Unity is required, social and political unity, great alliances for the transformations that are coming for the Chile of the future.”
Pinochet’s 1980 constitution
Undoubtedly, Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 Constitution was an authoritarian instrument aimed against the working class. The main author of the dictator’s constitution was Jaime Guzmán, founder of the fascistic UDI, who drew inspiration from Nazi German jurist Carl Schmitt and reactionary Spanish clericalism.
Some of Guzmán’s politically authoritarian and neoliberal economic philosophy codified in the constitution are well known. It enshrined the conception of the subsidiary state, which meant subordinating all social areas: education, health, social security, utilities and water to the market, and proscribed any attempt at nationalization. Changes to articles concerning political parties, the military, the electoral system, mining and constitutional reform required a two-thirds majority approval.
Gen. Augusto Pinochet signs dictatorial decree in 1973
Less discussed was Guzmán’s embrace of the State of Exception theory that Schmitt developed as part of providing a quasilegal garb to Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship. The theory essentially granted the dictator extraordinary powers—giving him executive, as well as legislative powers and possessing the highest legal authority—in a period of exception or emergency. Both the separation of powers and the rule of law were subsumed in the rule of the Führer.
In Chile this served to provide post factum legal immunity to the countless crimes committed during the counterrevolution against the politically radicalized working class, student youth and political opposition. The fascist-military junta orchestrated a political genocide, an attempted “extirpation” as Pinochet called it. During military rule, especially its first five years, the courts repeatedly declared human rights cases inadmissible, rejecting thousands of complaints and habeas corpus writs and systematically refusing to investigate state crimes.
Articles 40 and 41 in the 1980 Constitution concerned the State of Siege, one of the four “States of Constitutional Exception.” Article 40 stated that in the case of internal war or internal commotion, the president could declare a state of siege on all or part of the territory. Congress had a deadline of 10 days to accept or reject the decree, and silence was consent. Only by a two-thirds majority could Congress terminate the state of siege.
Article 41 dealt with the suspension of rights. It stated that the president may:
move people from one point to another in the national territory, arrest them in their own homes or in places other than prisons or other intended for the detention or imprisonment of common criminals, and expel them from the national territory. (He) may also restrict the freedom of locomotion and prohibit certain persons from entering or leaving the territory. (He) also, may suspend or restrict the exercise of the right of assembly and freedom of information and opinion, restrict the exercise of the rights of association and syndication and impose censorship on correspondence and communications.
The article went on to state that with regards to the courts:
Appeal for protection shall not proceed in states of exception with respect to acts of authority adopted subject to the Constitution and the laws that affect the constitutional rights and guarantees that, in accordance to the rules governing said states, may have been suspended or restricted. … In the cases of the previous paragraphs, the courts of justice may not, in any case, enter to qualify the factual basis of the measures that the authority has adopted in the exercise of its powers.
The center-left governments that have ruled for 24 of the past 30 years since the return to civilian rule in 1990 kept these provisions, albeit in modified form. The reason why must be clearly understood so workers and youth do not fall into the deadly trap of believing that reforming the charter will guarantee democratic and social rights or change class relations. Far from it.
Under capitalism, the purpose of the Constitution is first and foremost to uphold and protect the sanctity of the private ownership of the means of production. Private property is consecrated even in the revolutionary documents of the French and American constitutions that are imbued with the spirit of Enlightenment. The 18th century constitutions and the principles they articulate were the cause and the effect of a national revolutionary struggle between feudalism and the forces of reaction against the great mass of the nation, given political leadership by the then revolutionary bourgeoisie.
But with the further development of the productive forces arose sharp and irreconcilable antagonisms between the two main classes within the international capitalist economic order: capital and labor.
The rapid expansion of the proletariat in Chile took place alongside the explosive development of capitalism sponsored by incursions of imperialism into Latin America in the late 19th and 20th centuries. British and American capitalism dominated the technology, supplies, railroads, shipping and finance associated with their almost complete control of Chile’s nitrate and copper mines.
At no point has there ever been a sector of the Chilean capitalist class that sought to rally the nation in an anti-imperialist bourgeois revolution. This class, which consisted of the wealthiest landowners and simultaneously constituted between a third to half the parliament, happily lived off mining export revenues and never hesitated to drown revolutionary struggles in blood in the interests of mining barons.
The struggle against imperialist domination and super-exploitation and for the defense of democratic and civil rights and for social gains has been left exclusively to the proletariat. The working class must be organized in opposition to the bloodstained, ruthless and venal Chilean bourgeoisie utterly subordinate to its imperialist masters.
What the working class has lacked in its entire history is a leadership able to transform an insurgent class struggle into the fight for the conquest of power.
Outside a brief window with the founding of the Chilean section of the Communist International in 1922, the young, untested and inexperienced cadre of the PCCh came under the influence of the rightward shift that accompanied the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. It was soon co-opted into the state and participated in drafting the 1925 constitution as the country, in the middle of a deep economic crisis provoked by the collapse of saltpeter exports and declining British imperialist interests, was in the throes of explosive labor struggles and a military revolt.
Preparations for dictatorship
When Piñera decreed for the first time in the 30 years of civilian rule a state of emergency and brought the armed forces onto the streets, this shocked the country, and it drew international attention. The unprecedented police-state violence resulted in untold numbers of deaths and thousands of injuries and mutilations, the reports of mock executions, rape, torture and torture chambers, of severe beatings resulting in death and forced disappearances.
However this was only the most visible component of Piñera’s “war” against “a powerful, ruthless enemy.”
In the past year and a half, with the tacit and explicit endorsement from Congress, the ultraright government has passed more than a dozen laws beefing up the state, revamping anti-terror laws, utilizing the military to impose order, granting legal immunity to the repressive forces, erecting multi-institutional and multinational intelligence and surveillance task forces, and criminalizing social protest, targeting refugees, indigenous communities and the youth. All these measures are beginning to take form and are being used today.
For the first time since the military dictatorship, the country has been kept in a permanent state of emergency with tens of thousands of national defense forces controlling checkpoints in the 16 regions. The measure was sanctioned by Congress last March to contain the spread of the pandemic. In reality, it has been used to monitor and control the population.
Also the Army has been deployed to protect critical infrastructure, and the Marines, armed with the latest military equipment, have been deployed to reinforce Carabinero police in border control and surveillance.
And last February, parliament approved the dispatch of military personnel and a massive battery of armored vehicles to reinforce Carabinero Special Forces in the south. Ostensibly aimed at countering a wave of violence and acts of terrorism, which the government and the corporate media have without evidence accused the Mapuche indigenous population of inciting, the armed forces will provide intelligence and conduct policing operations in the regions of La AraucanÃa, BiobÃo and Los RÃos.
The bourgeoisie has used the constitutional convention as a deliberate decoy to grant itself time to prepare for the inevitable social eruption that will come as a result of the criminal mishandling of the pandemic and the unprecedented growth of unemployment, poverty and social inequality.
This is the significance of the increasingly indiscriminate use of the armed forces, and it must scream danger! The drive to dictatorship is real and far advanced.
The only progressive alternative lies in the political mobilization of the working class and youth in the fight for a workers’ government based on a revolutionary socialist program. This means breaking with the entire fake left and developing an independent political movement of the working class.
A new “point-in-time” report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shows that homelessness increased significantly during the Trump administration. The report includes a detailed snapshot of the state of homelessness in the US in January of 2020—just before the COVID-19 pandemic set in—and compares it to figures from previous years.
It stands as an indictment of the Trump administration and begs the question of exactly how many more people have become homeless over the last year as millions lost their jobs and fell behind on their rent or mortgages.
The report found that essentially all major metrics of homelessness are on the rise. At the beginning of 2020, there were over 580,000 homeless people in the US, or just under one in 500. Last year was the fourth consecutive year of growth in the homeless population in the country.
[Credit: Envato]
While the homeless population under the Trump administration increased by some 30,000 people, or about five percent, the number of unsheltered homeless—those who lacked any sort of nighttime shelter at all, for example, a car—increased by 28 percent. Moreover, the number of chronically homeless people, those who have been homeless for over a year or who are consistently in and out of homelessness, increased by a massive 40 percent, reaching levels last seen only in the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis.
The growth in homelessness was distributed across both “red” and “blue” states, those traditionally controlled by the Republicans and Democrats respectively, though Democratic stronghold states tend to have much higher homelessness rates. California has the largest single state homeless count at 130,000, and percentage-wise is only behind Washington D.C., New York and Hawaii. In President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, an infamous tax haven, homelessness increased by 26 percent between 2019 and 2020.
But the report only describes the prevailing conditions that existed before the pandemic.
From the beginning the World Socialist Web Site has characterized the COVID-19 pandemic as a “trigger event.” That is to say, the pandemic has not created a nightmare out of a good situation, but that the preexisting social setup laid the foundation for—if not the pandemic itself—its fallout, including mass deaths and economic destitution.
The HUD will not release a similar report for January 2021 until early 2022. But until then, a study of some key events of 2020 allows for an informed guess as to how these figures have risen still further over the course of the pandemic. While the pandemic changed everyday life in many ways, it did not change either the basic policies of the ruling class or its attitude towards the working class.
Almost immediately after the stock market crash in March 2020, unemployment in the country skyrocketed to over 15 percent. While it has since fallen back down, the current official figure of six percent is still higher than in previous years and is an underestimation of the real level.
When lockdowns were first instituted in March of last year, some 22 million jobs were lost. There has not been one week in the last year in which combined state and federal jobless claims did not total more than one million.
In September of last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under Trump implemented a freeze on evictions as an emergency measure to fight the pandemic. From the beginning, however, the moratorium was laced with conditions that were stacked in favor of landlords. Residents had to prove that they were impacted by the pandemic, that their income was below a certain threshold and that they had lost income in order to be protected.
Under Biden, the CDC has since adopted decidedly antiscientific policies. Most recently it has recommended reducing social distancing from six feet to three feet as a means to help the ruling class reopen schools. As CDC Director Rochelle Walensky put it, “Science evolves.” In other words, the CDC’s policy is to be subordinated to the prerogatives of the ruling class. One can expect the ban on evictions to “evolve” along similar lines.
When Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017 and left 50,000 people displaced, Trump made a spectacle of tossing paper towels to the audience at a press conference on the island. Biden’s response to the victims of the Texas catastrophe last month was different only in that it was better stage-managed. The federal aid given to Texas was equally threadbare as that given to Puerto Rico, and little is being done to help those bankrupted by five-figure electric bills after the storm.
The CARES Act eclipsed the 2008 bailout of the banks by making trillions of dollars of virtually free money available to the financial elite. In the same year that the wealth of the world’s billionaires grew to new heights, with figures like Bezos, Musk, Gates and Zuckerberg seeing their net worth surpass $100 billion, the working class lost their jobs, housing and quite frequently their lives.
The much-touted “American Recovery Act” will provide limited and temporary aid to millions of workers in desperate need. Called the “most progressive” bill since the New Deal, it establishes no new social programs, implements no taxes on the rich and all of its provisions will expire before the end of the year.
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy summed it up well, “Almost everything in this bill is simply an extension of the programs that Republicans were wildly enthusiastic about back when they were in charge of the White House and the Senate.”
Although Trump is out of office, the Biden administration is continuing his most important policies. His administration is continuing and even accelerating the aggressive maneuvers against China and is carrying out the same xenophobic attacks on immigrants.
One can be sure that on the question of housing, Biden will adopt the same manner of anti-working class policies as his predecessor, and that the horrific rise reported on conditions during the Trump administration will continue under Biden’s. Combating this requires a decisive break with both parties of capitalism and the fight for socialism to reorganize society to meet the needs of humanity.
About the Award: Increasing representation in AI offers a huge opportunity to bring diverse values, hopes, and concerns into conversations about the design and deployment of AI – and this is critical if AI is going to be a technology that benefits everyone. We also believe this is key to the potential for AI being one of the most important technologies ever invented.
We established the scholarship programme in an effort to help build a stronger and more inclusive AI community, who can bring a wider range of experiences to the fields of AI and computer science. The scholarships provide financial support to students from underrepresented groups seeking to study graduate courses relating to AI and adjacent fields. Scholars are also offered support from a DeepMind mentor, and have opportunities to attend leading AI academic conferences and DeepMind events.
Type: Masters, PhD
Eligibility:
These scholarships aim to support talented students from groups currently underrepresented in AI by removing barriers to access as they progress from undergraduate to postgraduate study.
In each region, given local circumstances, individual universities may offer scholarships to students from varying underrepresented groups. Very broadly, these groups may span gender, race, ethnicity, and socio-economic background, as well as students from certain regions with lower AI participation (such as Africa, Eastern Europe, and Latin America).
Selection Criteria: Universities offer scholarships to promising students from underrepresented groups who need funding to take up a place on a postgraduate course relating to AI.
Eligible Countries: International
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value of Award: The scholarships aim to ensure that scholars receive full financial support (tuition, stipend or living costs, and a grant for necessary equipment and attendance at an academic conference). Scholars are generally supported financially for the duration of their study, from the year they join their course. In a few cases, where graduate funding is already available through the university or department, DeepMind scholarships serve to enhance the existing funding, support the educational experience, and give the scholar the opportunity to focus more fully on their studies.
How to Apply: Scholarships are offered by participating universities directly to applicants for specific AI-related courses. Universities make information about upcoming DeepMind scholarships available when these opportunities are open.
It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
About the Award: Africa’s growing technology ecosystem offers opportunities to create digital solutions that make traditional ways of working more productive, while enabling the creation of new income streams and job opportunities. However, employers across the continent state that many job seekers do not possess the requisite digital skills, limiting employability prospects and business growth. The COVID-19 pandemic has also driven home the importance of digital tools and skills. In its wake, the most successful businesses were those whose operating model and employees could easily navigate the crisis and transition to digital service delivery.
As a result, Google are announcing three new Google Career Certificates available online on Coursera, which enable people to become job-ready for growing career areas such as IT Support, Project Management, UX Design and Data Analytics. These low-cost programs help people who want to learn online at their own pace, or who may want to change careers and don’t have the time or means to access traditional education. They can be completed in under six months and do not require relevant experience or a degree.
Type: Short course
Eligibility: Whether you’re completely new to the field or have had some exposure, a Google Career Certificate is the right program for you.
Eligible Countries: African countries
To be Taken at (Country): Online
Number of Awards: 5,500
Value of Award: Flexible online training programs designed to earn job-ready skills in high-growth, high-demand career fields such as IT Support, Project Management, Data Analytics and UX Design, available on Coursera.org. No relevant experience or degree required.
About the Award: The NUTM Scholars Program (NSP) is a one-year interdisciplinary Postgraduate Program in Technology, Entrepreneurship and Design. Through this flagship initiative, NUTM will nurture leaders in technology and business, solving for the growing need in the region for transformative leadership education.
The Nigerian University of Technology and Management (NUTM) is a world-class institution for higher education, focused on nurturing leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics (STEM) and Management in Africa, for Africa. NUTM aims to become a hub for the best-in-class talent from Nigeria and the African continent. NUTM is dedicated to driving excellence in fields critical to Nigeria and Africa’s development and envisions a future, where promising African youth are equipped with world-class education.
Type: Postgraduate
Eligibility:
Maximum of 32 years of age as at date of application
A recognised undergraduate or postgraduate degree in any discipline
High level of intellectual curiosity and leadership potential
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Interest in Africa and awareness of emerging global trends
Number of Awards: 60
Value of Award: Full scholarships will be awarded to all Scholars for the Founding Class.
NSP promises to make Scholars future-ready through a unique learning model – a multi-track curriculum and experiential learning modules with a strong focus on technology. The Scholars will be chosen on their potential to drive impact, solve challenges and create sustainable solutions for Africa and the world. Some of the key advantages of the NSP include:
New age curriculum: Enhance your knowledge in areas of: Technology; Entrepreneurship and Design; Management; Perspectives; Leadership; and Critical Thinking and Writing
Global faculty: Engage with leading faculty from the African continent and other parts of the world.
Experiential learning: Gain exposure to real-world issues through a nine-month multi track curriculum that includes a TEDLab.
Shadow a leader: Observe, learn and engage with select captains of industry.
Industry mentorship: Benefit from guest lectures, workshops and individual mentorship programs led by prominent leaders and entrepreneurs.
Global Immersion Week: Immerse yourself in a short study trip to the UK, US or China to gain perspective and exposure to international culture(s).
Career support: Gain requisite support to propel your ambitions and professional journey.
About the Award: Since 2020, the German Bundestag has been offering a scholarship program for politically committed young university graduates from South Africa, Namibia and Botswana who are interested in the German parliamentary system and who actively support basic democratic values in their home countries.
In a four-week compact program, eight fellows can get to know the German parliamentary system and political decision-making processes in the German Bundestag up close.
The program will take place in Berlin from January 1st to 31st, 2022. The core of the program is a one-week internship in the office of a member of the German Bundestag.
The focus is also on events on the German parliamentary system as well as lectures, workshops and seminars, among other things, on parliamentary democracy, the way parliament works and its function. In addition, the topics of pluralism, protection of minorities and culture of remembrance are conveyed as a political mandate. A workshop on project management should help to develop your own project ideas with the aim of promoting democracy and civil society in the respective countries of origin.
Type: Short course
Eligibility:
Citizenship of one of the three participating countries (dual citizenship possible)
younger than 30 years at the beginning of the scholarship
completed university degree
very good knowledge of the German language
Interest in political contexts as well as social / political engagement
Selection:
The scholarship program is aimed at committed, open-minded, resilient and politically interested young professionals from South Africa, Namibia and Botswana who want to actively and responsibly shape the democratic future of their countries.
Applicants are invited to a personal selection interview in the German embassies in the participating countries and are selected by an independent selection committee of the German Bundestag with regard to their professional, social, linguistic and intercultural skills.
The cost of traveling to the interview will be reimbursed on a pro-rata basis, provided the interviews are not held in your home country.
Eligible Countries: South Africa, Namibia and Botswana
To be Taken at (Country): Germany
Number of Awards: 8
Value of Award: The participants receive a grant of 500 euros. In addition, the costs for health, accident and liability insurance are covered. In addition, free accommodation is granted in a residential complex (two-person shared apartment). The costs of travel to and from Berlin will be reimbursed.
Duration of Award: 4 weeks
How to Apply: Please send the complete online application documents in a PDF document, the file name of which consists of your surname and first name (ie “surname-first name”), by email to the German representation in your home country.
Your application should be sent in German and contain the following scanned documents:
Passport photo (please insert on page 1 of the application form);
Application form (on the Internet at: www.bundestag.de/ips_afrikanisch);
Proof of very good German language skills (at least level B 2 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages);
Letter of motivation (maximum two pages);
Copy of passport or copy of ID;
Officially certified copy of the degree certificate 1 ;
a letter of recommendation in German or English (from a university professor or from the employer, in which the professional qualifications of the applicant for the program are assessed).
1 Copies are certified if an official body (German or foreign authority, embassy or consulate of the Federal Republic of Germany, university office, notary, officially sworn interpreter) confirms with an official seal and signature that the photocopy matches the original. If there are several stapled photocopies, each individual sheet must be certified. If the documents are not duly certified, the application cannot be processed.
Application deadline: July 31, 2021
Please send your online application to the German representation in your home country!
It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.
About the Award: The goal of the Engineering for Development (E4D) Programme is to promote research and education for the benefit of underprivileged people in low-income countries.
The E4D Programme is generously funded through the Sawiris Foundation for Social Development and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. The current programme phase runs from 2019 to 2023.
Type: Doctorate
Eligibility: Existing professional contact with a relevant professor is highly recommended • High English proficiency level is necessary • Maximum age: 40 years • Excellent MSc Degree and high academic performance is necessary • ONLY contact an ETH professor with a concrete project idea
Eligible Countries: Developing Countries
To be Taken at (Country): Switzerland
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value & Duration of Award: The grant sum is 175’000 CHF to cover the salary costs of the doctoral students for three years.
How to Apply:Only candidates with the support of an ETH professor are eligible to apply.Applications submitted without the letter of support will not be considered.
Application Deadline: 28th March 2021 at midnight CET.
Eligible Countries: Students from Developing Countries
To be taken at (country): Switzerland
About Scholarship: The aim of the IPCC Scholarship Programme is to build capacity in the understanding and management of climate change in developing countries through providing opportunities for young scientists from developing countries to undertake studies that would not be possible without the intervention of the Fund.
Applications from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) researching topics with the fields of study chosen for the call for applications are given priority.
Eligible Fields: Research proposals are encouraged from, but are not limited to, the following topics: Living soils, biodiversity, regenerative viticulture, agroforestry, water management and terrestrial carbon cycle.
Type: PhD
Eligibility:
The IPCC will accept applications from PhD students that have been enrolled for at least a year or are undertaking post-doctoral research.
Applicants should be citizens of a developing country with priority given to students from Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
Selection Criteria: Applications will be submitted to a two-level selection process. IPCC scientific experts will assess the applications in a first review. The IPCC Science Board will then review the applications and make a final selection of candidates to receive the awards.
Number of Scholarships: Several
Scholarship benefits: Each scholarship award is for a maximum amount of 15,000 Euros per year for up to two years during the period 2021-2023.
How to Apply: Applicants should register via the application portal here
Application Deadline: 16th April 2021 at 4 pm (GMT+1).
Type: Fellowship, Grants
Eligibility:
The Research Fellowship is open to PhD degree holders, PhD students, or Master’s degree holders with 5 years of relevant research and teaching experience.
The Seed Grant is open to PhD degree holders, PhD students, or Master’s students.
Candidates from the Global South, female candidates, and underrepresented populations in the research community are encouraged to apply.
Eligible Countries: Countries in the Global South
Value & Number of Awards:
3 Research fellowships of $18,000 USD each for 12 months.
10 Seed grant projects of up to $10,000 USD each for 9 months.
How to Apply: You can find more details about the application and assessment criteria in the following documents:
About the Award: Successful applicants will complete a three and a half month placement at the BBC.
Depending on their skills and interests, successful applicants could be placed in one of a number of areas of World Service Group activity including: World Service news programmes, BBC News online, World Service radio, digital output, BBC Media Action, BBC Monitoring, one of the BBC World Service language services, or Solutions-Focused Journalism.
Due to the changing Covid-19 situation the placement may take place virtually with a mix of in-person office based work when safe to do so. We will be working with the BBC to coordinate any consequences. Successful applicants will be informed of any changes to the programme as necessary.
Type: Internship, Training
Eligibility: Up to eight placements are available to current Chevening Scholars studying relevant degree programmes in the UK. Due to the nature of the professional placement, applicants must also demonstrate that they have at least two years’ experience as a working journalist, and/or have or will have completed a master’s in journalism from a UK university by the time that the placement starts.
To be Taken at (Country): UK or Online
Number of Awards: 8
Value of Award: The programme will also include:
Enrolment on a bespoke one-week course at the BBC College of Journalism.
Access to College of Journalism courses on the same basis as BBC staff. Awardees will be expected to complete at least one additional course during their placement.
Successful applicants will be supervised at a BBC location in London and will have a BBC mentor to assist them during the placement.
Successful applicants will receive the Chevening stipend for the duration of the placement, in addition and in order to meet the BBC standards under the New Talent Policy, the BBC will provide a total ‘top up salary’ for the period. The exact top up amount will be confirmed at a later date, as it is calculated to coincide with each new financial year. Successful applicants will be expected to find suitable accommodation themselves.
Duration of Award: Successful applicants will complete a three and a half month placement at the BBC.
How to Apply: To apply, you must complete a Chevening/BBC World Service Group Professional Placement Programme application form, AND submit the following to engage@chevening.org:
An up-to-date CV.
Status letter from your university that confirms the end date of your course.
A copy of your passport date page as well as a copy of your current Tier 4 visa/BRP ensuring eligibility to complete the placement in line with immigration regulations. Your visa needs to last long enough for you to complete this placement – until end of December 2021.
A complete Chevening/BBC World Service Group Professional Placement Programme application form.
In addition, applicants must consent to making their original Chevening applications available to the BBC (the information provided to the BBC by Chevening will not be transferred to any other third party without contacting you first).
Should applicants be successful in the first round of applications, they will be invited to interview with the BBC.
Please note that successful applicants are expected to honour their commitment to return to their country of origin upon completion of their placement. The BBC will not offer any professional placement to anyone beyond the terms of their current visa.
