History reveals that our controlling class is irresponsible

Lionel Anet

The dominant class writes our history from their own perspective, therefore its harsh brutal and dishonest, and that’s blame on our human nature to absolve our masters.

We are unaware of our entrapment in that harsh competitive society that’s bounded together by our compulsive socialness; we therefore see that setup as something of an asset as it still nurtures our economies; however, it’s degrading the planet’s ability to support its life. Especially with our overpopulation that’s stimulated by a competitiveness.  We can’t maintain our per capita use of the planet’s resources without continually diminishing them. Pre-fossil fuel era was only locally and temporally unsustainable; on the other hand, capitalism with its depend on economic and or population growth that can only be sustained by burning fossil fuels until “our” climate becomes too harsh for most living things. We own the planet because we think we do, and that allows us to use its renewable resources well beyond their renewability almost regardless of consequences for other life.

Capitalism was a logical outcome for western European feudalism when it allowed the serfs and artisans to supply the needs of those societies in the best and easiest way they could. That freedom and responsibility fostered a number of technical innovations, embracing whatever was useful from other civilization.      It allowed them to achieve a temporary but necessary “perpetual” built-in economic growth; it’s the way capitalism gave that necessary illusion of progress.

Nonetheless, we are on a treadmill that’s moving ever faster impelled on by a need to have and control more to satisfy a few dominant ones, by using people’s socialness to harness their intelligence, cooperativeness, and stamina to extract from the planet whatever is needed to fulfill the needs of the privilege  few.

Fossil fuel has increased our ability in manifolds of ways; it enabled us to support a vast growth in our population and a few to have an extravagant life style, in a world where most people are making do and many are in extreme poverty. The callousness of the wealthy is unforgivable but accepted as natural by them and as they dominate and their power, at present, can only be taken by those who are as egotistic as they are. It will lead to our offspring and life’s demise unless we understand why we do what we do.

Therefore, we need a savvy public and a few non specialized scientists who can assess society’s needs within nature’s ability to thrive. Humans are very social. We can’t live long in a solitary state without psychological damage. That need of company is not only for our mental health, it’s a practical need that enables us to cope with almost any situation due to our different interest and ability of compassion, physical and mental skills. The importance of a specific ability over another depends on the circumstance in our constantly changing world so we need the widest range of talents to cope with a largely unpredictable future.

The purpose of nearly everyone in civilized societies is to support the one to two percent of the population in luxury and attempt to fulfil whatever their desires maybe. Civilization has always indoctrinated its citizens to fulfill the wants of a dominant few; it’s the purpose of education and the information media, which now has largely supplanted religion. That education is in the main antisocial due to its specialized and intense competitiveness, which’s the governing mode of capitalism that has now lost some of its sustainability to satisfy the unjustifiable needs of its dominant controlling class.

Nevertheless, that dominant class is unaware of its dependence on a viable biosphere that’s presently stressed by an economic growth to satisfy that tiny minority who always want more. While the rest of the population are indoctrinated and manipulated to carry out the aspiration of those few, which is justified by spiritual or legal jargon according to societies’ technical ability. Early in Europe, slaves were the primary energy and work agent that could satisfy the few with their craving until the Roman Empire fell leaving a chaotic condition of the Christian church verses the feudal lords and their vassals all dependent on serfs who maintain the system and themselves the best way they could.

It was that freedom to support their lord and themselves the best way they could, that motivated the use of labor saving devices such as wind, water and animal power, all of which not only reduced the drudgery that slave endured, but released the mental constraint to innovate that slavery had on the intellectuals. It was that little bit of freedom that enable western society to dominate the planet by allowing its workforce to innovate and the incentive to do so.

That innovation became a necessity in England when forest were reserved to maintain its wind jammers ships, and that forced the lower class to burn coal instead of wood, which  eventually solved  an ever increasing energy need. It also released a few educated from their navel gazing to explain natural phenomenon, which puzzled them and demanded an explanation, which it shaped the laws of thermodynamic.

Although capitalist are in control of innovations that were created when a few of those individuals were originally in the middle or working class. However, after they attained their wealth and power from their innovation and establish themselves in a dominant position of power they in the main became conservative in their outlook or the concept is taken over by entrepreneurs.

Although there are many forms of civilization, they’re all control by very few domineering people and therefore the multitude is expected to fulfill their cravings. However, now that we are using fossil fuels to support and grow our economy, but unfortunately it’s also in the process of changing our climate from a behind one to one that would be eventually too hot to be livable as it’s becoming  self-energized. Although we know we must drastically reduce our total world carbon emission, and not just transfer it to the other parts of the planet, however and tragically, it’s the only way we can maintain that necessary growing economy, which unfortunately will sacrifice our children, and it’s the hopeless future we are leaving.

Many scientists have estimated that with present economic activities the world social systems will collapse well within this century resulting in mass starvation with untold violence and suffering probably followed by total desolation. It’s the future for today’s young. Unless we stop competing for supremacy, as all competitive activities are antisocial and a contradiction for us, and since we are the most social of any life forms because we have the body and therefore an intellectual ability to be so. Furthermore, except for sexual needs in many animals. All living things avoid competitive interactions as they wasted energy and can be fatal, nevertheless, one to two in a hundred of us lack feelings for others so with the anonymity in very large groups they can take and do take control, which can be welcome because as a social being we need order. But to have harmony we need to have unanimous decision on matters that affects the band. However this’s impossible in communities that are much larger than a hundred individuals, therefore, someone must take control to avoid chaotic conditions. However, it’s using our socialness that alloys those controlling few who lack feelings for others to dominate. We’re compulsively social and been so social one needs to be involve in a group of people we know to feel fulfilled, be relaxed and live as a part and within nature’s sustainability, and not on nature as we are doing now.

Competitive life must expand to give room for others to function and for it to appear as a viable way of living that dishonesty is hidden by its unsustainable frenetic activities.  We still must maximise the use of natural resources, which’s now unsustainable due to two factors the first is natures resources are finite while our demand are infinite. Our population is still increasing and so is our demand on nature, which’s far above “our” planet’s ability to provide that increasingly impossible growing demand on it. So it can’t last so something must go us or that way of life.

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To survive, we need a harmonious and efficient life style to live as a part of nature instead of on nature.

During civilisation we have learned and understood so much, yet in any of its multiple modes, we have ignored our nature and adopt a way of life that satisfies the few sociopaths in control. They have dominated and controlled practically all of civilised life wasting human and the planets resources such as on spending vast resources to build pyramids, and other monuments to satisfy the insane needs of those powerful few who lac feelings for others. Nevertheless, compared to that vast waste to produce and supports large military units, with the evermore costly sophisticate hardware, which’s a drain on society and nature, let alone the slaughter when used and the unimaginable waste of people’s time as soldiers but infinitely worst when there used in combat.

The amount of resources squanders in that uncontrollable competitive insanity is hard to take in. Yet we are still unaware of civilisation’s destructive character and our highly educated ones are well and truly indoctrinated in its conjured up image of superiority.

In Australia we have many quiz shows on our TV they’re based on trivia. Facts for their own sake, it trivialized information that can be vital for our wellbeing       problems that’re affecting our ability to survive, it overwhelmingly concentrates on competitive sport, which’s a gross distortion of our cooperative nature,                  it’s to satisfy a tiny few whose needs are to dominate and use as many individuals they can to extract whatever they need to dominate whoever can increase their domain.

There’s a desperate need to increase and justify competitive activities and even pretend they are socially natural. The gross falseness is submerge by a universal consistent glamorisation of the dishonesty that‘s found in all competitive activities which starts very early in schools and increases in its rivalry as the child goes up a grade. But worst still is the deceptive education that we instil in our young one, which isn’t an over sight but essential indoctrination to maintain and intensify an extreme competitive in civilisation.

Civilisation is at least doubly dishonest. Firstly, it pretends to be a natural progression from a barbaric state of chaotic violence to an orderly community. This’s a gross distortion of its state and history. Secondly, it deceitfully blames human nature for the violence and the gross flagrant disparity in societies acquired resources. Civilised societies not only relates unfairly within itself, that’s between different strata of people but also subordinates the rest of life and whatever is on the planet as the prime use for itself. Relationships in all civilised societies are unfair, therefore they’re dishonest. Throughout civilised history there never has been or could be peace and harmony. On the contrary all civilised systems are exploitative of nature which includes human as it’s dominated by a few very powerful privilege individuals who  enforces it, maintaining that way of life is natural for a social been therefore its beyond criticism.  Our socialness has been used by a tiny minority to subjugate society to fulfil whatever their cravings happens to be. This’s the essence of civilisation; it’s the use and control of the largest number of people to satisfy the desires of a few individuals who have little to no feeling for other people or anything else.

Since the use of fossil fuels we have not only depleted them and produced an ever warmer planet but manage to over populate the planet to an unsustainable state. Present society use resources without considering their sustainability to satisfy the whims of our masters who recently introduced competitiveness as a system to extract more from our planet.

It’s using our cooperativeness, the essence of socialness to compete against all comers.

At present life is live as if the rest of this century will be the same as the past one was with a continual economic growth, but what most people don’t understand is greenhouse gases that has already been emitted have still nearly 20 years of warming and more is going in the atmosphere per day from our activities and the emissions from the effect of global warming.

Life’s prime concern is the welfare of its next generation. This is so for any living thing, plant or animal. But it’s only at best a secondary consideration for civilised societies, their prime concerns is control of whatever is seen as important to increase the ones in power. Therefore, parents are the prime and main nurturer as is the case for all mammals, but it’s overruled by society’s fundamental interest, which’s the domination of whatever is needed to satisfy the fewest in power,  control by whoever the few in charge want. If we don’t accept that, and maintain civilisation, we will be doomed and it will end life on earth.

To survive we need to realize that we must cooperate instead of competing and if we don’t do that on a world scale, today’s infants will suffer an agonizing life and an early death.

We are in a crisis not only for us humans but nearly all of life and we have little time to pull out of this dive to oblivion.

China signals possible greater Middle East engagement

James M. Dorsey

Two initiatives send the clearest signal, yet, that China may be gearing up to play a greater political role in the Middle East.

Touring the region this week, Foreign Minister Wang Yi laid out five principles Middle Eastern nations would need to adopt to achieve a measure of regional stability.

He called on the region’s rivals “to respect each other, uphold equity and justice, achieve nuclear non-proliferation, jointly foster collective security, and accelerate development cooperation.”

Chinese ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chen Weiqing said China would be “willing to play its due role in promoting long-term peace and stability in the Middle East.” China is focusing on Gulf security and the conflict with Iran as well as the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Mr. Wang said before leaving for the Middle East that China would be willing to host a multilateral Gulf security dialogue that would initially focus on securing oil facilities and shipping lanes.

China, however, is likely to find that maintaining good relations with all parties works as long as it focuses on economics and even that could prove tricky if a 25-year long political, economic, and strategic China-Iran cooperation agreement signed in Tehran this week by Mr. Wang and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif proves to be what Iran suggests it could entail.

Moreover, finding common political ground among regional adversaries could be even riskier and more difficult.

Saudi Arabia has so far suggested that it has little interest in a gradual process that would allow Iran and its detractors to address low hanging fruit before tackling thornier issues, despite Chinese hints in recent months that it would engage provided Middle Eastern nations adopted its principles.

Saudi Arabia is the only Gulf country to have in the last year refrained from offering humanitarian aid to Iran, the country in the region hardest hit by the pandemic.

By the same token, Iran is unlikely to appreciate Mr. Wang’s reassurance during his stop in Riyadh that China supports Saudi regional leadership even if it does not express its view publicly in a bid to avoid jeopardizing its closer cooperation with China.

China sees endorsement of its principles as a way of managing rather than resolving myriad Middle Eastern conflicts and avoiding being sucked into them.

The Chinese initiatives are designed to exploit fears in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel that US President Joe Biden’s efforts to negotiate a return to the 2015 international agreement that curbed Iran’s nuclear program would not immediately address their concerns.

The Middle Eastern states want any agreement to also include limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program as well as an end to its support of non-state actors in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. The Gulf states and Israel have little faith in the Biden administration’s suggestion that a revival of the nuclear agreement that former US President Donald J. Trump abandoned in 2018 would create the basis for negotiations on non-nuclear issues.

The Chinese initiatives are also intended to cater to Middle Eastern concerns at a time that China and Western nations are locked into a tit-for-tat over criticism of Beijing’s brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the north-western province of Xinjiang.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s two holiest cities, have sought to legitimize the crackdown, which reportedly involves forcing the region’s Muslim Uyghur population to violate Islamic law, by describing it as a legitimate fight against extremism and political Islam.

Saudi and UAE backing of the crackdown fits the two states’ religious soft power endeavours that propagate a vaguely defined notion of ‘moderate’ Islam centred on the principle of absolute obedience to the ruler and repression of political Islam. The Saudi-UAE notions fit hand in glove with Chinese autocracy as well as its efforts to Sinicize Muslim culture in China.

Nonetheless, Mr. Wang’s visit to Iran is likely to have set off alarm bells in Riyadh. A China that feels less concerned about falling afoul of US sanctions on Iran as Chinese-US relations dive could significantly help the Islamic republic dampen the effect of Washington’s punitive measures. Chinese imports of sanctioned Iranian oil have surged in recent months.

Few details of the China-Iran agreement have been made public, but it holds out the promise of Chinese investment in Iranian infrastructure, energy, mining, industry, and agriculture.

Mr. Wang also said on the eve of his Middle East tour that he would be inviting Israelis and Palestinians to Beijing for talks. He held out the prospect of China when it takes over the United Nations Security Council presidency for the month of May pushing for a resolution that would reaffirm the principle of a two-state solution.

There is little prospect that the Chinese initiative would be any more successful than its past efforts to mediate between Israelis and Palestinians, even if the United States were to support the resolution. Israeli elections this month, the fourth in two years, are unlikely to produce a government that would have the stability, cohesion, and willingness to negotiate a deal that would meet minimal Palestinian aspirations.

Said China analyst Eyck Freymann: “The status quo in the Middle East basically works in China’s favour. The United States spends enormous sums to combat extremist groups and protect freedom of navigation in the region, and China benefits… What China wants is to preserve this arrangement while gradually acquiring the ability to pressure individual countries to bend its way.”

COVID-19 infections shoot up in reopened UK schools

Harvey Thompson

In the few weeks since the reopening of schools across the UK (in Scotland on February 22; in Wales on March 15; in England between March 8 and March 15) infections of COVID-19 have grown exponentially among pupils.

Mask wearing and testing have not been made mandatory in schools, even as data proves that pupils and education staff have an elevated risk from contracting COVID-19.

In the week to March 21 Public Health England (PHE), found that 43 percent of all new coronavirus cluster outbreaks occurred in Educational Settings. Of the 233 outbreaks, 101 were in Education Settings.

Public Health England graph showing that 43 percent of all new coronavirus cluster outbreaks last week occurred in Educational Settings (source: Public Health England)

On March 23, TES (formerly, Times Educational Supplement ) reported that the number of pupils absent for COVID-related reasons had doubled in the second week since schools reopened.

Citing recent data published by the Department for Education (DfE), the journal said that around 2 percent of state school pupils were absent on March 18 (up from 1 percent on March 11) due to having contracted or come into contact with the virus, or because their school was closed as a consequence of COVID-19.

TES explained that this “includes a near fourfold rise in the number of pupils self-isolating after potential contact with the virus in school” —from 33,000 on March 11 to 127,000 on March 18. One in 10 secondary school pupils were absent on March 18.

The DfE figures revealed than on March 18 there were:

· 7,000 pupils with a confirmed case of COVID-19

· 21,000 pupils with a suspected case of the virus

· 127,000 pupils self-isolating due to potential contact with a case of the virus from inside the educational setting

· 42,000 pupils self-isolating due to potential contact with a case of the virus from outside the educational setting

· 4,000 pupils unable to attend because their school was closed due to Covid-related reasons

The following is a snapshot—mainly from local press accounts—of the initial impact of growing infections after just a few weeks of in-person schooling across Britain.

On March 19, the Daily Mirror reported that 137 areas in England have seen a rise in COVID-19 infections since schools reopened, up to March 15, according to government data.

According to the Manchester Evening News on March 22, there had been confirmed cases of the virus at 74 schools in the Greater Manchester area since they fully reopened. The newspaper noted, “However, these are only the ones the Manchester Evening News has been alerted to by parents, so the true figure is likely to be even higher.”

Hundreds of pupils were sent home this week at schools across Yorkshire, including in Keighley, Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Sheffield. Ecclesall Primary school in Sheffield sent home 100 pupils to self-isolate. Another Sheffield school, Valley Park Community Nursery and Primary School, closed after a number of positive cases as a “precautionary measure”, following advice from Public Health England. Valley Park was one of the schools used in the national media as part of its “schools are safe to open” propaganda on March 8.

The BBC reported March 18 that Bricknell Primary School, in Hull—a previous epicentre of the virus —closed for two days following “several” positive coronavirus test results. Acting headteacher Nicola Waites sent a letter to parents informing them that the school was also awaiting the results of further tests. The 630-pupil school was to be deep-cleaned on Thursday and Friday ahead of reopening the following Monday.

Hull City Council, reported the BBC, said that a third of schools in the city had closed some educational “bubbles”.

The day before, March 17, the BBC had reported on the closure of Henley-in-Arden secondary school in Warwickshire due to staff and pupils testing positive. Martin Murphy, the CEO of the Arden Multi-Academy Trust, said there were only 268 of 650 pupils present on the day the decision to close the school was made.

The Lowestoft Journal reported March 19 that Phoenix St Peter Academy in Lowestoft postponed its reopening until after Easter due to infections in the school and the local community. A spokesperson said that cases had affected the school’s staffing capacity.

The same day, the Hampshire Chronicle reported that Westgate Secondary in Fulflood, Winchester, and St John the Baptist Primary in Waltham Chase, had been added to the Hampshire County Council list of affected schools, joining Kings’ Secondary in Winchester and Micheldever Primary, since they reopened.

Although much of the sporadic press coverage has publicised infections among secondary-age pupils—due in large part to the fact that many of them are undertaking voluntary twice weekly lateral flow tests (which only pick up around 60 percent of positive cases, and in some instances even fewer)—there have been reported infections among very young children, too.

Wales Online reported March 17 on 21 positive cases of COVID-19 in the previous seven days among the youngest pupils at Pontprennau Primary School, Cardiff. Three members of staff and 80 pupils from reception and nursery years were told by Public Health Wales (PHW) to self-isolate for 10 days after they were identified as close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Significantly, as the 21 cases at the school were all in the same two “contact bubble groups,” the rest of the school remained open.

In total 9,634 cases have been reported by Welsh schools since September, including 4,300 staff. The total pupil population of Wales is just 377,000.

The Johnson government is stopping at nothing to ensure that pupils remain in classrooms in order that their parents are able to go to work and churn out profits for the corporations.

This week, a trial at an initial 10 schools was rolled out under which pupils who are classed as close contacts of a positive case are kept in school. A full trial will see around 200 schools and colleges participating after the Easter holidays.

In order to participate, pupils and their families have to agree to be tested for COVID daily for seven consecutive school days. One of the schools which has volunteered to be part of the trial is Westhoughton High in Bolton. The Manchester Evening News reported that “Thirty-eight students who would have been sent home last week, after two positive cases in Year 7, have remained in school for all their lessons after their parents consented to them doing the daily tests instead.” The newspaper’s comment that “They [pupils] still need to isolate when outside school…” demonstrates how farcical, and dangerous, such a trial is. The tests mainly being taken in schools are the notoriously unreliable Lateral Flow tests. Of the new daily tests over seven days in the trial, only two will be the more reliable laboratory analysed PCR tests.

The reopening of schools and the wider economy last September, following the first national lockdown, resulted in a huge second wave of the virus, which cost over 80,000 lives. By December, school-aged children had the highest rates of infection in the country, alongside young adults.

At the time of the September reopening, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that one in 1,400 people in England had COVID-19. The figure in the most recent data, for the week to March 20, is one in 340. An estimate provided to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies predicted that even a more gradual reopening plan, and factoring in an effective vaccination programme, could cost another 58,000 lives by June 2022.

Parents take children to a primary school in Bournemouth, UK following the reopening of schools nationally. March, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)

Over 146,000 people have already been killed by COVID-19 according to official figures. The only reason this staggering death toll is not higher still is due to the opposition in the working class which forced the ruling class to impose national lockdown measures.

There still exists enormous opposition among educators, parents and workers to the reckless reopening of schools and nonessential workplaces, but this is being suppressed by the education unions and the Labour Party who are collaborating with the Tory government to ensure they remain open. In response to the schools’ infection data from the DfE, Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders union, said—after ensuring all his members were sent into unsafe workplaces—that it was “inevitable with schools fully open once again that there will be positive cases and close contacts having to self-isolate”.

UK councils funding crisis threatens essential services

Margot Miller

Local councils in the UK are facing a devastating funding crisis that is bound up with the health crisis produced by the Conservative government’s homicidal response to the pandemic. The consequences for essential services already pared to the bone are dire, with thousands of job losses planned and increases in local taxation.

The National Audit Office (NAO) public spending watchdog warned that 25 local authorities are verging on bankruptcy, while 94 percent will implement swingeing cuts to produce legally required balanced budgets. After more than a decade of austerity, councils are unable to deal with the extra costs incurred during the pandemic.

A closed down Sure Start children's centre in Ardwick, Manchester. The Bushmore Sure Start site was one of two children's centres closed in Ardwick in 2013 by Labour-run Manchester City Council (credit WSWS media)

The large, metropolitan Labour Party-held councils in the poorer areas are least able to cope, after suffering funding cuts of up to a third since 2010—much greater than in the more affluent Conservative-held councils. The government’s aim is to eliminate central grant funding to councils, so the cost of services is offloaded onto impoverished residents via the council tax. Councils will be able to retain 75 percent of business rates, up from 50 percent, but this in no way compensates.

From April, the NAO expects remaining special educational needs and homelessness services to be gutted, while more theatres, libraries and community centres face closure. Subsidies supporting bus routes will be slashed.

Adult social care will be subject to review. The government granted councils powers to increase the adult social care precept within the council tax over and above the five percent maximum increase—to offload government financial responsibility for this desperately underfunded service. While vitally needed services are slashed, local taxpayers face council tax increase of up to five percent.

According to the NAO, councils spent an extra £6.9 billion on Covid-related measures out of already depleted budgets—providing personal protective equipment in adult care, housing rough sleepers and aiding test, track and trace where outbreaks occurred.

These huge outlays are on councils’ books at the same time as they expect to have lost £2.8 billion in 2020-21 due to the pandemic. Councils have lost £695 million from car parking fees, £554 million from leisure centres, theatres and museums and a further £2.9 billion in funding from unpaid council tax and business rates. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show councils will lose £642 million from commercial income investment due to lockdown measures.

The government handed over £350 billion in loans to big business as the pandemic hit, followed by £895 billion in quantitative easing from the Bank of England, but gave next to nothing for emergency funding for local authorities, leaving them with a disastrous shortfall of £600 million.

Labour councils blame the Tories for the parlous state of funding, but it was the 2007-10 Labour government under Gordon Brown that first ushered in austerity. Cuts to pay for the £1 trillion bank bailout were imposed by councils including those held by Labour while their trade union partners stifled opposition in the working class.

Labour councils continued imposing cuts from 2015-19 under the instruction of the party’s nominally left leader Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. In 2015, they wrote to Labour councils insisting they set “legal” budgets, which meant imposing cuts. Labour’s 2016 conference made it a disciplinary offence for Labour councillors to “support any proposal to set an illegal budget” or to “vote against or abstain on a Labour group policy decision on this matter”.

The majority of London’s borough councils are Labour controlled. Lewisham residents face a council tax rise of 4.99 percent, 5.9 percent when the rise in the Greater London Authority precept is included. Council house rent increases of 1.5 percent are anticipated in Lewisham, while the April budget includes cuts of £28 million (part of £40 million worth of cuts over the next three years). Lewisham’s annual budget from central government was slashed from £400 to £240 million over the last decade.

Newham council is expected to impose £30 million “cuts and savings” out of a total £43 million by April 2023.

Hackney will cut services by £11 million, including £1.6 million in adult services, £540,000 in children and families’ services, £332,000 in education, and £217 000 in public health. Hackney raised council tax to five percent.

Croydon council is seeking a loan from the government to maintain services. Residents will pay an average £2 a week extra in their council tax bill. Council house rents will increase.

Hounslow residents anticipate a council tax rise of five percent, while Lambeth plans cuts of £43 million by 2024, plus a council tax rise of 4.99 percent.

The Conservative-run Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, one of the socially most polarised areas in the UK and the location of Grenfell Tower, will raise council tax by 4.99 percent, including a 1.9 percent increase for council services and 3.9 percent for adult social care.

Outside the capital, the situation is dire. Birmingham council in the Midlands estimates a staggering budget shortfall of £121.2 million by April 2025. It has drawn up plans to slash spending by a further £40.7 million, including cuts to adult social care by £7.8 million.

The largest council in the UK, Labour-led Birmingham is one of the most deprived, ranking sixth out of 317 local authorities according to the Office for National Statistics. In the last 10 years, its budget has suffered cuts of £730 million, with 42 percent of children living in poverty while their mothers die younger.

By October 2020, Labour-run Manchester council had already enforced £379 million in cuts and reduced its workforce by 40 percent, around 4,000 full-time staff. It plans to slash another £41 million this year and proposes a council tax rise of five percent and 160 job losses. In addition, £2.3 million cuts in funding for homelessness is planned.

An end to the national ban on evictions during the pandemic in May could see 3,000 Manchester families forced into temporary accommodation. Saving of £1.6 million are planned from the council’s A Bed Every Night scheme, providing shelter for rough sleepers.

Around 800 jobs are threatened in Leeds as the council plans cuts of £87 million. Its adults and health department will be slashed by £7 million, including 52.5 job losses and the closure of two care homes. Three youth community centres will close, and the City Development department aims to eliminate 176 jobs as part of £7.55 million cuts. Grants to the Leeds Grand Theatre, Opera North, Northern Ballet, Leeds Playhouse and the Henry Moore institute will be cut by 15 percent to save £227,000. The annual Christmas lights are to go. The resources department will suffer the biggest job losses, with the axing of 345 jobs.

Liverpool council plans cuts of £15.4 million and a council tax hike to five percent. The council’s budget was slashed by £450 million since 2010.

Nottingham council approved plans to axe 272 jobs, equivalent to five percent of the council’s workforce.

In Newcastle, cuts of £40 million are proposed over two years, hitting care services, bins and library services, plus a 4.95 percent council tax hike and 15 job losses. Children’s services face cuts of £6 million, while adult social care faces a hit of £13 million. The council has lost £300 million due to funding cuts over the last decade.

Public health services are being decimated at a time when they were never needed more.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s last budget allocated 1.4 percent spending increase to public health, a 24 percent real-term cut since 2015, from £4.2 billion in 2015-16 to £3.3 billion. This further depletes children’s health services, health visitors, sexual health, drug and alcohol abuse schemes, as well as spending on local outbreak management and coronavirus contact tracing—increasing pressure on the National Health Service.

EU summit: Trade war instead of protection from coronavirus

Peter Schwarz

Thursday’s European Union summit demonstrated once again that the EU is neither able nor willing to offer its citizens even the most minimal protection against the coronavirus pandemic.

Charles Michel, president of the European Council and US President Joe Biden in EU summit video conference. (Credit: European Union)

As the 27 EU leaders met for their video conference on March 25, the infection and death toll across Europe was once again soaring dramatically. Nearly 900,000 people have now died from the pandemic, nearly 40 million have been infected, and around 250,000 new infections are being added every day.

The seven-day incidence (the weekly number of infections per 100,000 inhabitants) is over 500 in five European countries, with Estonia leading the way with 708, followed by Hungary (658), the Czech Republic (527), Montenegro (517) and Serbia (503). In Poland, it is 444, in France 362.

In France, the number of new infections rose above 45,000 on Wednesday, the highest since November last year. In the region around Paris, intensive care units already stand on the brink of exceeding their capacity. In Germany, the head of the Roland Koch Institute, Lothar Wieler, warns that the number of new daily infections will rise to 100,000 if the current trend is not halted.

Nevertheless, European governments and the EU strictly refuse to impose a lockdown, as would be necessary to contain the pandemic. In particular, they categorically refuse to close non-essential production facilities, schools and day-care centres, even though it has now been proven beyond doubt that schools are among the most important vectors for spreading the pandemic and that pupils and parents are far more susceptible to the new variants of the virus than the original one. The interests of big business and corporate profits take precedence over the health and lives of working people in every respect.

This also applies to the procurement of vaccines, which was at the centre of the EU summit. Here, too, the focus is not on human lives but profit interests and geopolitical goals.

So far, only 62 million of the EU’s 450 million inhabitants have been vaccinated once and 18 million of them twice. The EU has failed to provide the necessary production capacity. So far, pharmaceutical companies have delivered only 88 million vaccine doses to the EU. By the end of March—i.e., in the first three months of the year—it should be 100 million. This means that just 10 percent of the population can be fully immunised against the virus.

At the summit, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that three times more vaccine would be available in the second quarter than in the first. But even if this were to be the case, which, based on past experience, is anything but certain, the quantity would not even be enough to vaccinate half of the 70 percent needed to stop the further spread of the virus by the middle of the year. At the same time, new strains are constantly developing against which the vaccines are less effective.

Throughout Europe, outrage and resistance to the governments’ reckless coronavirus policies are growing. The ruling class everywhere is responding by fueling nationalism.

In the days leading up to the summit, there had already been a fierce exchange of blows between Brussels and London. Von der Leyen accused Britain of importing 21 million vaccine doses from the EU without delivering a single one to the EU. She accused Boris Johnson’s government of withholding vaccine supplies from AstraZeneca, which has so far delivered only about a quarter of the agreed 120 million doses to the EU. London hit back, invoking existing treaties and threatening the EU with retaliation.

The day before the summit, the EU Commission tightened up the rules for vaccine exports. In future, exports are to be stopped if a recipient country already has much more vaccine than the EU or if it obtains vaccine and does not allow exports itself. Until now, an export ban had only been possible if a company had not fulfilled its delivery obligation to the EU. In practice, such a ban had only occurred once, when Italy banned the export of 250,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Australia.

After several telephone calls between Johnson and European heads of government, the waves were somewhat calmed at the summit. The Netherlands in particular, and to some extent Germany, which have intensive trade relations with Britain, tried to play it cool. There were also fears that a trade conflict over vaccines could disrupt the supply of components needed for their production from other countries.

But the conflict is by no means resolved. France, for example, is taking a much tougher stance, and the German media are also promoting a trade war. The Süddeutsche Zeitung commented that tightening export rules was not enough: “In fact, the European Union should not merely restrict the export of vaccines under certain conditions but ban them in general.” The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung also wrote: “As long as vaccine doses are a scarce commodity, the EU cannot export unconditionally all over the world. Exports should depend on how others behave.”

There are also fierce national tensions within the EU, which were vented at the summit. Poorer states, such as Latvia, Bulgaria and Croatia, are far behind on vaccinations because they had relied on the cheaper AstraZeneca vaccine, which has seen the biggest supply shortfalls. Others, like Hungary, have ordered vaccines from Russia and China, which the EU strongly opposes because it undermines its confrontational course against these countries. In Slovakia, Prime Minister Igor Matovič’s decision to order 2 million doses of the Russian vaccine even triggered a government crisis.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Austrian head of government Sebastian Kurz, both Christian Democrats, clashed violently at the summit because Kurz threatened to veto the decision to give poorer countries—but not Austria—some extra doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The fierce national conflicts further undermine the inadequate measures against the pandemic. The virus, which knows no national borders, can only be defeated through coordinated international action. But the capitalist governments are organically incapable of doing this. While their profit-before-life policies have now claimed 2.8 million lives worldwide, they use the vaccine as a means of enrichment and as a weapon in the geostrategic struggle against their international rivals.

China, where only 90,000 have been infected with the virus and 4,600 have died from it thanks to a consistent lockdown and vaccination policy, is encountering growing hostility. In the evening, US President John Biden spoke to the EU summit participants via video link to convince them of his confrontational course against China and Russia. His words fell on receptive ears, as the European powers increasingly view China, a rising economic power, as a rival in the export of high-value industrial goods and influence over Central Asia, Africa, and other regions of the world.

However, the aggressive action of the US against China puts Europe, and especially Germany, “between a rock and a hard place,” as the pro-government German think tank DGAP wrote in an English-language article. China is the largest and fastest-growing market for many German companies.

“The EU may well consider China a strategic rival and an economic competitor. And Berlin may find much to criticize about China’s economic policies and an uneven level playfield. But no-one can wish away the fact that China is of major economic importance to Germany. Meanwhile, the US remains Germany’s largest export market, the most important destination of foreign direct investment and a crucial provider of advanced, including foundational and emerging technology. The intensification of China-US competition will create many losers. Germany is going to be one of them.”

Germany and the EU are responding to this “predicament” with a massive military buildup to pursue their own imperialist interests in the escalating geostrategic conflicts. The business-oriented Institut für deutsche Wirtschaft (IW) recently calculated how much Germany will have to increase arms spending in the coming years to keep its commitments to NATO: An additional €86 billion by 2024, almost twice as much as the current annual defence budget.

Morenoite CRT offers political alliance with Spain’s PSOE-Podemos government

Alejandro López

Spain’s Morenoite Workers’ Revolutionary Current (CRT), linked to Argentina’s Socialist Workers Party, is reacting to mounting opposition to the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government’s criminal “herd immunity” policy by trying to tie it to the Spanish capitalist state.

After Iglesias intervened in the snap Madrid regional elections by calling for a common “anti-fascist” struggle, the CRT called for a political front with Podemos. As Podemos remains in government, this is simply a call for a political front with the PSOE-Podemos government against the working class.

In a little over a week, the CRT’s main online newspaper Izquierda Diario has written eight articles appealing to parties working within Podemos to build an “anti-capitalist front.” These include:

*Revolutionary Left and its student front, the Students Union, both of which work within Podemos;

*Anticapitalistas, a political tendency that co-founded Podemos with Stalinist professors in 2014 and which maintains close ties to Podemos after l eaving the PSOE-Podemos government last year;

*Red Current, a tendency which previously worked within the Stalinist-led United Left, now part of Podemos, and earlier joined a number of nationalist Basque and Catalan separatist groups.

The Popular Party (PP) called the May 4 elections in Madrid in an attempt to ally with the fascistic Vox party and capitalise on the collapse of the right-wing liberal Citizens Party and is framing the vote in terms of recalling the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. Its election slogan is “communism or liberty,” the slogan of the fascistic Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights on the eve of the Civil War. Madrid PP leader Isabel Ayuso even said on prime-time television, “When people call you a fascist, you know you are doing well, that you are on the right side of history.”

Two months since Trump’s attempted January 6 coup in Washington D.C. aimed to overturn the US presidential elections, the PP’s alliance with Vox points to the growing danger of fascism for the working class in Spain and internationally.

The opposing bloc between the PSOE, Podemos and More Madrid—a right-wing Podemos split-off led by Podemos founder Inigo Errejon—will not, however, fight the danger of fascistic rule in Spain. Indeed, it bears central responsibility for implementing the European Union’s (EU) “herd immunity” policies and the buildup of police-state surveillance and repression in recent years. It has furiously downplayed the danger posed by the fascistic officers who openly boast of preparing a coup in Spain.

Amid this crisis, CRT is calling for a political front with Podemos and offering to do what it can to revive its tattered political credentials. In an Izquierda Diario editorial, CRT leader Santiago Lupe warns: “The bankruptcy of neo-reformism leaves it much worse off than when they emerged to be able to repeat the role of containment and diversion to face the social unrest.”

Even after Podemos’ herd immunity policies have let COVID-19 claim over 100,000 lives in Spain, the CRT stresses it is prepared to vote Podemos. Incoherently complaining that Podemos “renounces any independent perspective” from the government of which it is a part, the CRT adds: “Now, imagine that [Unidas Podemos] called to defend a minimally independent programme of the capitalist parties, against the rich, in defense of the working class, women and youth. In such a case, even if your strategic perspective were reformist, a critical vote could be of some use.”

The bankruptcy of Podemos poses a decisive question to the working class in Spain and across Europe—the building of a new, socialist revolutionary leadership. The only way to halt the EU’s criminal herd immunity policy is to build a political movement in the working class fighting to expropriate the financial aristocracy and transfer state power to the working class. This requires a determined political break with Podemos and all the bankrupt petty-bourgeois parties that orbit around it.

The CRT, in contrast, aspires to do nothing more than provide political cover to the Spanish government, whose left flank is exposed by growing working class anger at the reactionary role of Podemos. It hopes to leverage the wide media coverage it has obtained in the past month since the outbreak of youth protests against the PSOE-Podemos government’s jailing of rapper Pablo Hasél. Its programme combines “left” demagogy with tacit support for Podemos’ herd immunity policy of prioritising profits over human life.

Lupe states: “What we need is a left without complexes, which openly defends a programme so that the capitalists pay for this crisis. A programme that defends measures such as the distribution of hours without salary reduction to end unemployment, the repeal of all labour reforms—also those of the PSOE—, earlier retirement age, taxes on large fortunes, the expropriation without compensation of real estate owned by speculators and large holders or the nationalization under control of their workforce of strategic sectors and companies that lay off workers or close.”

Remarkably, Lupe proposes not one measure on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has resulted in 123 million infections and 2.7 million deaths worldwide. In Spain, the PSOE-Podemos government policy has left over 100,000 dead and over 3.2 million people infected. Its reopening of schools and the economy to save “summer profits” is now rapidly provoking a resurgence of cases expected to create tens of thousands more avoidable deaths.

Lupe’s omission is not accidental. It could only be done by a tendency that works out its perspective based on the manoeuvres of Podemos and with contempt for the health and lives of the working class. The fact is CRT defends the herd immunity perspective put in practice by the both PSOE-Podemos government and the PP, backed by Vox, in the region of Madrid.

Instead of calling for nonessential work to be put on hold, workers to shelter at home on full pay, and for aid to artists and small businesses, CRT has repeatedly denounced the PSOE-Podemos’ limited lockdown and social distancing measures from the right. The CRT insists that crucial social distancing measures are “limiting our liberties and movements at their will,” in a statement from January.

In a statement for the Madrid elections entitled, “It is not enough to ‘move a piece,’ we must break the game board: we need an anti-capitalist and class front,” CRT explicitly defended herd immunity policies, while attempting to reduce the struggle against the pandemic as a budgetary and staffing problem.

It called for “A programme that, in the face of the serious health crisis, intends to increase healthcare and education budgets, and the intervention of all the private health resources that are necessary to combat this crisis, hiring more staff and moving to fixed contracts for all temporary and interim staff.”

CRT’s reference to an increase in the “education budget” is aimed at defending the continuation of in-person education. Last September, as the fall semester began, CRT advocated reopening education centres, while admitting the safety of teachers and students “cannot be guaranteed.” This was in complete alignment with PP in the Madrid region where its leader and regional premier, Isabel Ayuso declared, “It is likely that practically all children, one way or another, will be infected with coronavirus.”

This policy has led to a disaster. One article published by Metropoli Abierta last month before the recent resurgence of the virus, explained that COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in schools. In one region, Catalonia, “it maintains a constant acceleration … schools in quarantine due to Covid-19 infections have increased by 1,703 compared to those recorded” the day before, reaching 26,284 (1.83 percent of the total), “a figure that means an increase of 6,361 students confined in the last three days.”

The political allies of Podemos to which the CRT is appealing have responded to make clear that they are firmly oriented to Podemos. For its part, the CRT is responding by making clear that it is still seeking an alliance with them, even as these organizations ally with Iglesias and Podemos.

Red Current has posted a statement calling for a vote for Podemos if Iglesias includes “more social content” in its programme. It states, “We ask that beyond the slogans they should give us compelling reasons to all those who, like us, do not find reasons to vote for them. We have never made a religion of voting or not voting. We need a solid reason, one that goes beyond the hackneyed and failed ‘stop the right’ and that demonstrates change on tangible ground for the lives of the working class and youth.”

Revolutionary Left and the Student Union took only a few hours to endorse Iglesias after he posted his electoral video calling for an “anti-fascist front.” They claimed they would “participate decisively and actively, supporting the candidacy of Pablo Iglesias with a class, socialist and anti-fascist programme.”

CRT complained about this “unfortunate” decision but repeated its appeal to the Revolutionary Left: “We insist that our comrades of the Revolutionary Left … defend our perspective: let’s build an anti-capitalist front.”

For its part, Anticapitalistas has called for “the critical vote for the two parties that are to the left of the PSOE,” in other words, More Madrid or Podemos.

After the decision, CRT continued to leave the door open to an alliance. While critical of this decision by its “comrades,” it welcomed Anticapitalistas’ decision to hold “open assemblies” to debate new political fronts.

If the “debate is sincere,” states the CRT, “then there is no time to lose to generate the frameworks for a broad debate among those of us who are committed to a recomposition of an anti-capitalist and revolutionary left for the class struggle. Nothing prevents us from starting to form an anti-capitalist pole to build a programme based on class independence in the face of the crisis we are going through. Let’s keep going.”

In fact, Anticapitalists was part of the PSOE-Podemos government, which attacked migrants, showered the military with billions of euros, and responded to strikes of steelworkers and protests by delivery workers against unsafe working conditions by unleashing riot police. It also banned protests and rallies, cynically arguing that health considerations had to prevail over the right to protest—while sending millions of workers back to work amid the pandemic. This excuse is now routinely used by the PSOE-Podemos government to ban protests.

The record of Anticapitalists provides irrefutable evidence of the hostility of this tendency to the working class. CRT’s attempt to promote Anticapitalists with a new left-wing guise underscores that it is itself a barely disguised wing of Podemos and the capitalist state.

German train drivers union head calls for massive staff cuts

Dietmar Gaisenkersting & Peter Schwarz

The chairman of the German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL, Gewerkschaft Deutscher Lokomotivführer), Claus Weselsky, has called for massive staff cuts at the country’s main rail company, Deutsche Bahn (DB, German Railways).

“With regard to personnel, Deutsche Bahn has far too many people on board, they mainly do projects involving self-employment, at least half of them are dispensable,” Weselsky told Der Tagesspiegel, the daily newspaper, adding that in “general administration, many are kicking their heels in well-heated offices or in home office, while colleagues on the front line are keeping the shop going even during the pandemic.”

Weselsky has made similar comments in other interviews. On the YouTube channel “Jung & Naiv,” for instance, he claimed that among DB’s 211,000 workers in Germany there were “more chiefs than Indians.” For 20 years, he said, the administrative apparatus has been inflating, with nothing else to do but pressuring and controlling workers in the company while worsening their working conditions.

Klaus Weselsky on the Jung & Naiv podcast (screenshot)

The 127,000 employees of DB outside of Germany are beyond Weselsky’s circle of vision. If he had his way, DB would dump them as soon as possible.

In 2014 and 2015, many rail workers at Deutsche Bahn and other transport companies joined the GDL because they hoped it would fight against an unending spiral of wage cuts, staff reductions and increased work pressure. At the time, the GDL brought rail traffic to a standstill with a total of nine significant strikes. It was opposing the adoption of a contract agreement agreed to by the corporatist Railway and Transport Union (EVG, Eisenbahn- und Verkehrsgewerkschaft) with railway management.

Since then, however, it has been shown time and again that the GDL is no alternative to the EVG—a member of the German Trade Union Federation, DGB. The GDL ended the contract dispute in 2015 by signing an agreement, which banned workers from taking industrial action for four years. In reality, the GDL’s main concern was to win recognition from DB as a contract bargaining partner. At the beginning of 2019, the union agreed to a new contract with a duration of 29 months, which barely compensated for the inflation rate and obliged its members to refrain from strike action until February 2021.

Now the smaller union is again in conflict with DB management because, on the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EVG has brought forward contract negotiations planned for this month and had already agreed to a “restructuring contract” in September 2020. The deal provides for an increase in wages and salaries for the approximately 211,000 railway employees of just 0.5 to 1.5 percent until February 2023. The GDL had rejected an early contract agreement.

In the run-up to these developments, an agreement was struck between Germany’s Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU, Christian Social Union), the DB executive, the EVG leadership and the DB group works council. In an “Alliance for our Railways,” they decided last May to cut company personnel costs by two billion euros ($US2.4 billion).

In the meantime, DB has announced that it will apply the Collective Bargaining Unity Act (TEG) for the first time next month. The law was passed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)-CSU-Social Democratic Party (SDP) grand coalition government in 2014 to prevent smaller unions like the GDL (or UfO and Cockpit at Lufthansa, the largest German airline) from going on strike. The act allows companies to deal solely with the union with the largest membership as contract partner.

According to Deutsche Bahn, both the EVG and the GDL are represented in 71 of the group’s 300 different companies. In 55 of these companies, only the agreements with the EVG will be applied in the future, because the EVG has the most members, while in 16 companies’ contracts will apply to the GDL. Around 38,000 DB employees are affected.

Once again, the GDL sees its status as contract partner in jeopardy. Weselsky has already indicated that the GDL is prepared to make concessions. “Of course, we would consider a reorganisation,” he told Der Tagesspiegel. But for that, “a reorganisation plan would have to be presented.” Apart from “colourful PowerPoint slides and rosy promises” nothing so far was on offer. Management had gambled badly, took off all over the world and had “no idea about how to run railways in this country.”

Weselsky’s restructuring plan is illustrated by his proposal to lay off half of all administrative staff and confirms that the GDL is just as reactionary as the EVG. It is obvious that a union that attacks other workers in its own company is also stabbing its own members in the back.

The reason for this cannot be found solely in the person of Weselsky but rather in the bankruptcy of the trade union perspective he represents. The unions regard capitalist relations to be the unalterable norm and the basis for their own activity. They seek to regulate wages and working conditions within the framework of existing property relations and strictly reject any mobilisation of the working class against capitalism.

As long as the focus of production was concentrated within a national framework and the world economy expanded, such a trade union perspective was able to achieve some social improvements. As the size of the “cake” to be distributed became bigger, both profits and wages could rise. Such a state of affairs, however, has long since ceased to exist.

With globalisation—the growing dominance of transnational corporations and financial institutions—the size of the “cake” depends directly on the international competitiveness of each corporation, i.e., its ability to exploit workers to the hilt. Any social concession scares off investors, causes the stock price to fall and induces the corporations to relocate production to countries with lower wages.

The unions have responded by transforming themselves into co-managers, who defend the competitiveness of “their” company at the expense of the workforce. They blackmail workers, play one plant off against others and organise wage cuts and layoffs. In return, their officials and works councillors are well paid. A works council leader or union secretary earns several times as much as an ordinary production worker. The former workers at the Opel car plant in Bochum, in the steel industry and in many other sectors have all learnt this lesson the hard way.

As a consequence, executives’ salaries, dividends, share prices and the fortunes of billionaires have risen exponentially, while the situation for workers has sharply deteriorated. The railways are no exception.

Previously a director of the former state-owned company received a salary equivalent to that of a top civil servant. However, today’s board members draw corporate executives’ salaries and earn many times more. The contracts of company head Richard Lutz, Infrastructure Director Ronald Pofalla (CDU) and Passenger Transport Director Berthold Huber are to be extended this week and their salaries increased by 10 percent in 2023, despite the coronavirus crisis. Lutz would then receive 990,000 euros (before bonuses), Pofalla and Huber 715,000 euros each.

Weselsky regularly rages against the increase in management salaries, but as a trade unionist, member of the CDU and fierce opponent of socialism, he works closely with the employer. The only difference between him and other union bureaucrats is that he is even more narrow-minded. While mimicking the role of a militant train driver, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs leaves him cold. His more than two-hour appearance on the YouTube channel “Jung & Naiv” shows this particularly clearly.

Born in 1959, Weselsky worked as a train driver in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and praised the unification of Germany in 1989-90 and the introduction of capitalism into former Stalinist-run East Germany. He proudly described his first industrial action with the newly founded GDL-East, claiming in July 1990 that, with a short strike, his train drivers had ensured their wages would be converted 1:1 to West German currency instead of 2:1 as originally planned.

In fact, at that time all wages, pensions and living costs, such as rent, electricity, etc. were converted 1:1 by law. Chancellor Helmut Kohl (CDU) wanted to avoid at all costs that the reunification ratified on October 3, 1990 could be jeopardised by social struggles. What Weselsky conceals is the price the working class paid for this.

The Kohl government could afford the 1:1 exchange rate because most of the jobs in the former German Democratic Republic would soon be wiped out. At the time of reunification, 540,000 unemployed people were already registered in the former GDR, 1.8 million were on short-time work and 300,000 took early retirement.

The railways were not spared from this jobs massacre. The workforce of the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn shrank from 253,000 to 138,000 within two and a half years. At the time of the subsequent railway reform in 1994, there were still about 500,000 employees in rail transport in eastern and western Germany—today there are less than half that number.

Nevertheless, in the “Jung & Naiv” interview, Weselsky praised the introduction of capitalism in the GDR in the strongest terms. He had “very much welcomed the new legal system” in 1990, he said, and stressed that “Marx, Engels, that sounds so much like class struggle. And we don’t do that. That’s the very big difference.” He remains a member of the CDU, even though he differs with the party on its acceptance of the Collective Bargaining Unity Act.

Weselsky also explicitly welcomed members of the far-right Alternative for Germany into the GDL. It is a “democratically legitimate party,” so he rejects the exclusion of AfD members from the GDL. That would be a “turn away from the principle of a united union.”