First round of French regional elections marked by record abstention

Kumaran Ira & Anthony Torres

The first round of regional elections in France took place on Sunday. They were marked by a historic abstention rate, while the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National-RN) of Marine Le Pen secured the most votes in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA) region.

The elections took place amidst the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 110,000 people in the country, due to Macron’s actions since the beginning of the crisis to permit the virus to spread. For the political establishment, the elections are used as an indicator in advance of the presidential elections next year.

Far-right leader Marine le Pen attends a press conference in Toulon, southern France, June 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Early estimates put the national turnout at just 32.8 percent, with abstention at 67.2 percent, a record high for a two-round election under the Fifth Republic. In 2015, abstention in the regional elections was 49.9 percent; the highest abstention ever was in 2010, at 53 percent. In contrast, the abstention rate in the 1986 regional elections was 22.7 percent.

This points to the widespread disillusionment with and hostility to the established political parties, as well as a distrust of Macron’s handling of the pandemic, which has been tacitly backed by parties such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise (LFI).

The regional elections appoint 1,767 regional councillors for six years in France’s 12 metropolitan regions. In the first round, if a list obtains an absolute majority of the votes cast, it gets a quarter of the seats to be filled. The remaining seats are distributed by proportional representation among all the lists that obtained at least 5 percent of the votes cast.

The Republicans (LR) won in Hauts-de-France (43.1 percent), Grand Est (31.5 percent), Normandy (35.1 percent), Pays de la Loire (34.1 percent) and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (43.8 percent), and in Ile-de-France (34.2 percent of the vote). The PS came out on top in five regions: Centre-Val de Loire (25.6 percent), Nouvelle-Aquitaine (28.6 percent), Occitanie (39.6 percent), Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (26.2 percent) and Bretagne (20.8 percent).

Le Pen’s far-right National Rally leads with 34.8 percent in the PACA region.

In Corsica, the autonomist Inseme per a Corsica is leading with 28 percent of the vote.

With no party obtaining an absolute majority of the votes cast, a second round of elections will be necessary in all regions next Sunday. Parties that obtained at least 10 percent of the votes cast can stand in the second round, and possibly merge with lists with at least 5 percent of the votes.

At a national level, according to an Ipsos/Sopra Steria estimate, the results of the first round by political party are: LR and its allies, 27.2 percent; the RN, 19.3 percent; the PS and its allies, 17.6 percent; Europe Ecology-the Greens and allies, 12.5 percent; Macron’s Republic on the Move (LREM) and its allies, 11.2 percent; Mélenchon’s LFI and allies, 4.2 percent.

Several commentators have highlighted the widespread discrediting of the political class that the election reveals. In its weekend edition, Le Monde wrote, “this desertion of voters is a sign of a sick democracy, of a political disillusionment, where the feeling that ‘voting is useless’ is taking root.”

Frédéric Dabi, the director of Ifop Opinion, said on LCI this Friday that this abstention rate will be “the major lesson of this election night” and an “earthquake that will have consequences, because an electoral balance of power is primarily the result of participation and a differential of mobilization between camps that vote and camps that do not vote. But when we reach such a level, for whom does the bell toll? It rings for all political parties, all segments of the population.”

Macron’s LREM is discredited and failed to win in Hauts-de-France, Auvergne Rhône Alpes and Occitanie.

The first round was a disappointment for Le Pen’s RN. Previously, polls and media outlets predicted that it would come first in six or seven regions, and win the Grand Est, the Centre-Val de Loire and PACA in the second round. In reality, the RN vote has declined compared to the 2015 regional elections, in which it won almost 28 percent of the vote in the first and second rounds, or 6.8 million votes. In 2015, the RN did not win any regions in the second round, but it did win 358 regional councillors, three times more than previously.

However, despite the drop in its vote in the first round, the RN remains a major established political force in France, largely thanks to the legitimisation of its policies by Macron and by the former Socialist Party government of President François Hollande before him.

For LFI and Mélenchon, who received just under 20 percent of the vote in the 2017 presidential elections, the vote of 4.2 percent was a clear blow. In the midst of the greatest health catastrophe in over a century, LFI did not present any real alternative to the disastrous and politically criminal management by the government in the interests of the financial aristocracy.

In the second round, LFI is aligning itself with the other bourgeois parties, allegedly in order to block the Rassemblement National. Mélenchon called for no region to be left to the RN, stating: “We call for not adding one more blow to the misfortunes of our democracy. We will do what it takes to convince everyone that no region should be given to the National Rally.”

Macron and the entire political establishment have largely contributed to the rise of RN by legitimising the politics of the far right in recent years. While he has led attacks on workers in collaboration with the unions, Macron has continued to promote the far right.

After his victory in 2017, Macron made the “Republican salute” to Marine Le Pen and her supporters. Forces within his Ministry of Culture attempted to have the works of Charles Maurras, the 20th-century anti-Semitic leader of Action Française, a pillar of the Vichy collaborationist regime who was convicted as a traitor after the Liberation, published. In 2018, as he sent riot police against the “yellow vests,” he hailed the collaborationist dictator Philippe Pétain as a “great soldier.”

Since the start of the pandemic, the Macron government has provided billions of euros to banks and big business while pursuing a policy of “herd immunity” that has cost more than 110,000 lives in France and more than a million in Europe. During this period, the richest have increased their fortunes enormously, while the majority of the population have seen their standard of living fall.

In the wake of the pandemic, Macron has adopted much of the RN’s agenda in an attempt to permanently undermine democratic rights. This includes the anti-Muslim anti-separatism law, which scuttles the 1905 law on secularism and the separation of church and state, and opens the way for the arbitrary dissolution of cultural and political organisations. He has also passed the “global security” law, which expands police powers against protesters and the population.

Brazil’s Workers Party seeks right-wing electoral alliances as generals warn of “breaking point”

Miguel Andrade

Last Saturday’s massive demonstrations against fascistic President Bolsonaro’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic have deepened the crisis of the Brazilian ruling class, which fears mass social opposition may turn against the entire capitalist order.

Twice in less than a month, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have taken to the streets with hand-painted signs bearing the names of loved ones lost to COVID and calling Bolsonaro a mass murderer and genocidal. As last Saturday’s last demonstration took place, the country surpassed the 500,000 mark for COVID-19 fatalities—the second worst death toll in the world, trailing only the United States, which has a 50 percent larger population. This toll has more than doubled in the first half of 2021 alone, and leading health experts now project that, following the same trend of doubling deaths every six months and amid a slow vaccine rollout that has so far immunized only 10 percent of Brazilians, the total number of dead could reach one million by 2022.

The demonstrations were a sharp, albeit only initial demonstration of the deep anger of workers already expressed in hundreds of strikes against the herd immunity policy of the Brazilian and international ruling classes, particularly among manufacturing, health, transportation and education workers all across the country.

Mass protest in São Paulo on June 19 (Credit: @midianinja)

While these strikes and struggles have been suppressed and isolated by the media, the corporatist unions and the Congressional opposition led by the Workers Party (PT), the eruption of mass demonstrations has definitely placed Brazil on Latin America’s expanding map of massive social unrest now engulfing countries from Paraguay to Colombia. It has also blown to pieces the narrative promoted by Brazil’s petty-bourgeois “left”—that the working class and impoverished sections of the middle class are dominated by social conservatism and passive subordination to the fascistic Bolsonaro.

This demoralized and false narrative has never been taken seriously by the government itself, with Bolsonaro consistently declaring that Brazil faces the specter of a mass social revolt like the one that shook Chile in 2019, and that such an eruption would force him to assume dictatorial powers to “restore order.” Bolsonaro has repeatedly warned his opponents not to “push it” (“esticar a corda”), that is, not to fundamentally oppose him, in order not to “provoke” a coup.

Such warnings have now been taken up by the head of the Supreme Military Court (STM), active-duty Gen. Luis Mattos, who claimed bluntly in an interview with the right-wing Veja magazine that “all of those opposing the government” were “pushing it” by attributing to the president “everything that was wrong” and “not letting him rule.” This situation, he warned, would lead to a “breaking point.” The government leader in the Brazilian House, Deputy Ricardo Barros, also declared on June 8 that “we will reach a point where judicial decisions will not be followed,” referring to the defeats suffered by the government in the courts, which Bolsonaro has accused of “overstepping” their authority.

Gen. Mattos made his threats during the same week in which the Army, Navy and Air force legal offices joined Bolsonaro’s Solicitor General (AGU) in defending, in the Brazilian Supreme Court, a statute declaring that civilians—including journalists—who “slander” the Armed Forces should be prosecuted in military courts. The law is part of a 1969 military criminal code enacted during the so-called “lead years” of barbaric political repression by the 1964-1985 US-backed military dictatorship.

Popular anger over the half-million avoidable COVID deaths, record levels of unemployment, mass impoverishment and skyrocketing social inequality are deepening divisions within the ruling class over how to deal with the explosive Brazilian social situation. This is highlighted by the increasingly open declarations by senior figures within the political and military establishment recognizing that Bolsonaro may not accept the 2022 presidential election results if he is not re-elected.

Within military circles, these warnings have been ever more vocally expressed by Bolsonaro’s former government secretary, retired Gen. Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz. Under the former PT governments, Santos Cruz had been a commander of UN “peace-keeping” troops in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as former PT President Dilma Rousseff’s strategic affairs secretary. He was interviewed by Veja magazine and, in unusually blunt terms, compared the Brazilian situation to that of so-called “failed” states where he had commanded UN troops. He charged the Bolsonaro government with “sponsoring fanaticism, spectacle, populism. That is the process behind every authoritarian regime.” Ultimately, he declared, “in a divided society, this criminal fanaticism we are living under ends in violence.”

Santos Cruz doesn’t make his warning based on a principled opposition to social inequality or dictatorship, but out of fear that the Brazilian ruling elite, in continuing its support for Bolsonaro, will sleepwalk into a revolutionary situation, with the outpouring of social opposition getting out of the control of the so-called opposition led by the PT.

Under these conditions, the most pressing task of those factions within the ruling class opposed to Bolsonaro is to chloroform public opinion regarding the objective incompatibility of democratic forms of rule with pervasive explosive levels of social inequality. Those factions aim to single out Bolsonaro and his closest allies as fanatical aberrations, speaking for no one but themselves, and thereby directing social opposition behind traditional forces within the political establishment which are ostensibly opposed to Bolsonaro’s “fanaticism.”

This operation was accelerated after the unexpected mass outpouring in the protests of May 29. It has at its center the cobbling together of electoral alliances for the 2022 general elections, in which the presidency, the House, a third of the Senate and all state governments and legislatures are at stake.

The electoral maneuvers were kicked off in Rio de Janeiro, Bolsonaro’s political base, with the June 11 announcement by Rio Deputy Marcelo Freixo, a star of the pseudo-left Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), that he was leaving the party he helped found in 2005 as a PT dissident, and entering the Socialist Party (PSB), the ninth largest party in the Brazilian House. Freixo declared on the same day in a Veja interview that the next elections would not be about “left versus right, but civilization against barbarism.” He said his switching parties was necessary to attract right-wing figures unwilling to side with the PSOL, while adding that the PSOL would ultimately join a broad coalition with the anti-Bolsonaro right.

Questioned why he didn’t rejoin the PT, he declared that joining the PSB was actually the PT’s recommendation, due to the popular rejection of the party in Rio after its sponsoring of successive state governments in the state that were brought down by corruption. On the following day, the highlight of Freixo’s announcement of his campaign for governor was to name as his chief law enforcement advisor the former minister of Defense and Public Safety in President Michel Temer’s right-wing government, Raul Jungmann. Jungmann declared he would collaborate with Freixo in order to “articulate a wide democratic front to free Rio from violence and corruption.”

Jungmann’s record leaves no doubt about the fraud of Freixo’s claim that his candidacy will represent “civilization against barbarism.” As Temer’s Public Safety minister, Jungmann was the senior civilian figure behind a year-long and unprecedented military intervention in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which saw the virtual overthrow of civilian authority and the installment of Gen. Walter Braga Netto at the head of Rio’s law enforcement. In the first months of the intervention, the PSOL’s city councillor Marielle Franco, who was tasked by the city as a human rights ombudsman, was brutally murdered by a death squad. For three years, Freixo and the PSOL have charged that the murder was carried out by Rio’s vigilante-style police gangs known as “militias,” to which the Bolsonaro family has multiple financial and political ties.

The crime remains unsolved, and Freixo, who had politically sponsored Franco’s career, had railed against Jungmann for using her death to strengthen the military intervention. Gen Braga Netto went on to become Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, and then defense minister in May 2021, when the president fired the entire military high command in order to consolidate his grip over the armed forces.

As with other senior military officials who joined the “barbaric” Bolsonaro government, Braga Netto has been cast by the PT and PSOL as a “modern” and “constitutionalist” general, despite the explosion of human rights violations during the Army’s rule over Rio de Janeiro. Jungmann went on to found and lead Brazil’s first integrated civilian-military think tank, CEDESEN, which promotes the illusion that the military is committed to constitutional rule.

The path promoted by the PT and its bourgeois and pseudo-left allies, of subordinating opposition to Bolsonaro to the divisions among the most reactionary architects of Brazil’s brutal repressive apparatus, can only lead to catastrophe. The violent swing to the right embodied in Marcelo Freixo’s turn to figures like Raul Jungmann expresses the immense objective pressures towards authoritarian rule that have inevitably accompanied the insoluble crisis of Brazilian and world capitalism. The role of such pseudo-left forces is to politically disarm workers and prepare the conditions for a dictatorship, conditions which significant sections of the bourgeoisie and its military command believe are not yet in place.

COVID deaths rise among Brazil’s Petrobras oil workers

Brunna Machado

The uncontrolled spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil has had particularly catastrophic effects on the working class. While the capitalist class affirms, through the statements made by each company, that it “follows the protocols” and that workers get infected when they are off duty, the role of the workplaces as centers of transmission of the virus—and, consequently, as strategic places to fight the pandemic and defend the lives of the population—has become increasingly clear.

Similar to what has been seen in factories, transport and other workplaces, refineries and oil platforms have an infection rate above the national average. In the month in which Brazil surpassed the grim milestone of half a million COVID-19 deaths, the workers of the state-run energy giant Petrobras are seeing the deaths of their colleagues skyrocket.

According to monitoring by the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME), there was a 125 percent increase in Petrobras workers’ deaths in the last two months, from 20 deaths as of April 5 to 45 deaths by June 15. A 27 percent increase in total infections among these workers was registered over this same period. So far, of the 46,416 direct workers at Petrobras, 7,205 (15.5 percent) have been infected with the virus, a proportion above the national average (approximately 8 percent).

Striking workers at the Landulpho Alves refinery (RLAM) in Bahia, Brazil (Twitter)

This survey, however, does not even include outsourced workers, which in many Petrobras units correspond to half or even most of the workforce. The government’s records also do not disclose information per production unit, which makes it difficult for workers to check and control this data. According to the accounting of the Unified Federation of Oil Workers (FUP), there are actually more than 80 workers, who have died of COVID-19 at Petrobras since the beginning of the pandemic.

Even in the face of rising infection and death rates, the company is preparing a return to on-site work for the approximately 20,000 employees of its administrative sector, who have been working remotely. The return is planned to happen gradually starting in July, coinciding with the peak of a third wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths in Brazil, according to leading scientists’ projections.

In addition to the exposure of workers to infections and the lack of data on the real impact of the pandemic, Petrobras is being accused of promoting quack treatments for COVID-19, recommending drugs such as Ivermectin to its employees. The FUP says it has received reports from workers denouncing this practice and has lodged an official complaint through one of its local unions, the Sindipetro of Northern Rio de Janeiro, presenting as proof a prescription given to a worker.

The company denied having given this guidance, but in a press report it defended the “autonomy” of the doctors and did not condemn the prescription of the medicine, which, besides being ineffective for COVID-19, poses serious risks to those taking it. Doctors from COVID-19 treatment centers in São Paulo, such as the Clínicas and Emilio Ribas hospitals, warned about the side effects of drugs such as Ivermectin, which are jeopardizing the treatment of severely ill patients.

In March, the WHO had reiterated its recommendation “not to use Ivermectin for patients with COVID-19, regardless of the level of severity, or duration of symptoms.”

Despite all these warnings, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro encourages the use of Ivermectin, as well as Azithromycin and Hydroxychloroquine, all of which are ineffective against the virus. With propaganda that these drugs offer an “early treatment” to COVID-19, Bolsonaro is leading doctors and companies across the country to adopt what he calls the “COVID kit.”

A BBC News Brazil report, published in March, reported that at least four companies have distributed the “COVID kit” to their employees in São Paulo, Paraná and Santa Catarina. The case of Petrobras, a global and government-run company, is even more grotesque and alarming.

In line with the Brazilian ruling class as a whole, Petrobras has tried to absolve itself of responsibility for the increase in infections and deaths and has blamed the workers themselves for getting sick. “Even with all the prevention protocols adopted in the units and recommendations for individual care regularly issued by the company, employees are subject to risks also during transportation, personal routines, time off or even in telecommuting,” the company declared.

Besides the risk of death from COVID-19 in Petrobras units, the privatization process of the state-owned company is worsening the conditions of workers. According to Sindipetro of São Paulo’s Coast, since 2019, 37,610 jobs have been ended at Petrobras and its subsidiaries, which include the dismissal of 14,311 of its own workers and 23,299 outsourced workers. The workforce cuts have meant longer work shifts, increasing the exposure of workers to infections and the risk of accidents.

In March, workers at Petrobras’s RLAM and Regap units went on strike in response to the sale of these refineries and the outbreaks of COVID-19 in the plants. In late May, workers at three Petrobras Biofuels (Pbio) units went on a two-week strike against the privatization.

Although these strikes developed in Petrobras units across the country, with stoppages and protests in several other units, they have been systematically divided and isolated by the trade unions, even as struggles against infections in the workplaces were developing in different sections of the working class, such as teachers and transport workers.

Anti-China legislation on Taiwan introduced in US House of Representatives

Ben McGrath

A “Taiwan Peace and Stability Act” was tabled in the United States House of Representatives on June 17 in the latest bipartisan effort to intensify pressure on Beijing over the self-ruled island of Taiwan. The purpose is to further challenge the “One China” policy and deepen preparations for war against the mainland.

An F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet is seen on the deck of the U.S. Navy USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea, 2018 (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

The leading Democrat and Republican on the Asia subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ami Bera and Steve Chabot, respectively, introduced the legislation, which is of a piece with the anti-China bill that recently passed the Senate with bipartisan backing.

The latest bill states: “In order to ensure the longevity of US policy and preserve the ability of the people of Taiwan to determine their future independently, it is necessary to reinforce Taiwan’s diplomatic, economic, and physical space.” Behind this double-speak, Washington intends to strengthen Taiwan in order to maintain its separation from China.

Taiwan is considered a crucial aspect of Washington’s future war plans against the mainland. Earlier this year, the Pentagon called for the stationing of offensive missiles on Taiwan and other nearby islands.

The legislation accuses Beijing of “coerc[ing] actors into adhering to its ‘One-China Principle.’” It cites countries that have broken off relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing since 2016 as supposed evidence of this “coercion.”

Without openly rejecting it, the bill represents a challenge to the legitimacy of the “One China” policy, which has governed cross-strait relations since Washington formally cut ties with Taipei in 1979 and acknowledged Beijing as the government of all of China.

Last August, the Trump administration announced “significant adjustments” to Washington’s interpretation of the “One China” policy. Since taking office, President Joe Biden, backed by the Democratic and Republican Parties, has continued where the Trump White House left off, taking further steps that chip away at the “One China” policy.

Three sections of the bill call for the US to deepen its involvement with Taiwan. The first instructs the US State Department to develop strategies “to advance Taiwan’s meaningful participation in a prioritized set of international organizations.” In particular, it cites the World Health Organization (WHO) as a potential body for furthering Taiwan’s involvement on the international stage.

Both Washington and Taipei have used the lie that Taiwan warned of the dangers of COVID-19 in a December 31, 2019 email to the WHO, but was ignored, while Beijing attempted to cover up what was taking place. The mention of the WHO is also meant to further the spurious claims that China is responsible for the global pandemic.

The second section calls for developing economic relations with Taiwan, no doubt to take advantage of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, a key element of Washington’s war plans. The US hopes to maintain control of the supply of semiconductors for its own military and economic ends. The push is also aimed at pressuring Taiwanese companies to cut ties with the Chinese mainland, an aspect of the economic warfare being carried out, first by Trump and now Biden.

The third section calls for deepening US military relations with Taiwan. It accuses Beijing of “attempts to intimidate Taiwan, including through high rates of PRC [People’s Republic of China] sorties into air space near Taiwan, and PRC amphibious assault exercises near Taiwan.” It states that the government should evaluate “the feasibility of expanding coordination with US allies and partners to enhance deterrence over a cross-Strait conflict.”

This is a call for Washington to further develop war plans with allies in the region, such as Japan, which occupied Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. In addition, the section calls for increasing Taiwan’s ability to wage “asymmetric” warfare against Beijing.

Washington’s accusations against Beijing are entirely hypocritical. Since the Obama administration’s 2011 announcement of its “pivot to Asia,” successive administrations in Washington have pursued military build-ups, regular naval drills in the South China Sea, and “freedom of navigation” operations to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims.

At the end of Trump’s term, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lifted all restrictions on meetings between US and Taiwanese officials, a policy that Biden has continued. The current administration has demonized China with phony claims of genocide in Xinjiang, accused Beijing of creating the COVID-19 virus in a Wuhan laboratory, and sent naval vessels through the narrow Taiwan Strait at a record rate.

Under Biden, the United States sent its Palau ambassador to Taiwan, the first time a sitting ambassador has visited the island since 1979. Most recently, three senators visited Taiwan aboard a US military aircraft to announce the donation of COVID-19 vaccines to the island after Taipei accused Beijing, without evidence, of blocking vaccine purchases.

Biden’s nomination for assistant secretary of state for East Asia Daniel Kritenbrink suggested during a hearing on June 15 that Washington could consider abandoning the “One China” policy. He stated: “I do think that maintenance of that status quo and of that security is a dynamic situation. As the threat from [China] grows, as Beijing’s aggressive and bullying behavior vis-à-vis Taiwan grows, I think that our response has to be calibrated as well.”

This supposed “bullying” largely consists of Beijing’s regular sorties into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). However, Admiral Lee Hsi-ming, the former chief of the general staff of Taiwan’s military, stated earlier this year that these flights were “more about political messaging than about military operational significance.” An ADIZ is declared unilaterally by governments, without basis in international law, and does not constitute territorial air space.

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley stated during a Congressional hearing on June 17 that, despite recent claims China would soon invade Taiwan, “there’s little intent right now, or motivation, to do it militarily.” He added: “I think China has a ways to go to develop the actual, no-kidding capability to conduct military operations to seize through military means the entire island of Taiwan, if they wanted to do that.”

Milley’s comments are not a call for defusing tensions with China, but the very opposite. Believing it has the upper hand at the moment, US imperialism is provocatively ramping up tensions with Beijing, while intensifying efforts to hit China economically.

Credit Suisse report reveals vast increase in global wealth inequality amid pandemic in 2020

Kevin Reed

The Research Institute of Credit Suisse published its “Global Wealth Report 2021” on Tuesday, showing a substantial worldwide increase in wealth inequality during 2020. The report states, “The repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic led to widespread rises in wealth inequality in 2020.”

The report admits that this growth in the wealth gap—amid the devastating impact of the public health and economic crisis of 2020—is rooted in the “nature of the policy response” by governments and central banks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Global Wealth Pyramid 2020 (Credit: Credit Suisse Research Institute Global Wealth Report 2020)

Summarizing the impact of these polices, the report states, “Wealth creation in 2020 was largely immune to the challenges facing the world due to the actions taken by governments and central banks to mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19.”

The report goes on to state that the initial widespread negative impact on GDP and share prices in February and March 2020 was overcome with central bank interest rate reductions and “prompt action” by governments to help financial markets regain confidence and equity markets to reverse their losses by June.

Credit Suisse is a global investment bank and financial services firm based in Zurich, which has offices in every major financial center around the world. The organization specializes in “wealth management” services and caters to the needs of the capitalist elite and this, its twelfth annual report, is written to provide strategic advice to its customers.

While the writers and editors do their best not to point directly to the class struggle implications of the data contained in their report, an element of concern is evident about stating too bluntly what has really been going on over the past year.

On the one hand, they state that “the aggregate wealth of those at the top of the wealth pyramid and the resulting rise in the numbers of millionaires and UHNW [ultra-high net worth] individuals ... would be expected to raise wealth inequality.”

Meanwhile, they hint at the difference between the vast increase in the wealth of the rich and the experiences of the working class—the economic depression that destroyed tens of millions of jobs and forced millions into poverty, homelessness and hunger—by writing, “The contrast between what has happened to household wealth and what is happening in the wider economy can never have been more stark.”

Significantly, the report claims that the rise of the stock market and inflation of asset values of the rich “in the second half of 2020 was unforeseen.” The report goes, “These asset price increases have led to major gains in household wealth throughout the world. The net result was that USD 28.7 trillion was added to global household wealth during the year.”

Thus, the Credit Suisse Research Institute reporters do not mention that the central banks have been flooding the financial markets with cash that has funneled enormous sums in one form or another into the “household wealth” of the richest people on the planet. In the US, the Federal Reserve bank has been buying assets at a rate of $120 billion per month.

The report defines net worth or household wealth as “the value of financial assets plus real assets (principally housing) owned by households, minus their debts. This corresponds to the balance sheet that a household might draw up, listing the items which are owned, and their net value if sold.”

Among the key statistics reported by Credit Suisse is that the number of millionaires increased worldwide by 5.2 million to a total of 56.1 individuals who possess 45.8 percent of the world’s wealth. With one-third of these new millionaires (1.7 million) residing in the US, 2020 was the first year that more than one percent of the world’s adults were “dollar millionaires.”

A measure of the scale of the increase in economic inequality last year is shown in the statistics presented on the growth in the number and personal assets of what are known as ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI), that is individuals with net worth above $50 million. The report says there were 215,030 UHNWIs worldwide in 2020, an increase of 41,410 people, or 23.9 percent, over 2019. More than half of the increase, 21,313 people, were in the US.

Within the UHNWI category are subgroups: 68,010 adults with wealth above $100 million and 5,332 with wealth above $500 million.

Reviewing the bottom wealth quartile, the report states without comment, “We estimate that 2.9 billion individuals—55 percent of all adults in the world—had wealth below USD 10,000 in 2020.”

Analyzing the upper-middle segment, those with wealth between $100,000 to $1 million, the report states this group has “expanded significantly this century, from 208 million to 583 million. They currently own net assets totaling USD 163.9 trillion, or 39.1 percent of global wealth, which is nearly four times their share of the adult population.”

This group plus those in the top quartile, with wealth over $1 million, represent 12.2 percent of the world’s population and they own a staggering 84.9 percent of the world’s total wealth or approximately $355.5 trillion.

The report contains statistics on the distribution of the wealth accumulation of the super-rich in different regions of the world that also highlight the socio-economic inequality within the global capitalist system. For example, while the report hails the worldwide average wealth increase per adult of 6 percent, it glosses over the fact that Africa, India and Latin America experienced a decline in average wealth of -2.1 percent, -6.1 percent and -11.4 percent respectively. The indebtedness of these regions also grew significantly during 2020.

By far the largest wealth accumulation and expansion of wealthy individuals took place in the US. As mentioned above, the US had 39 percent of the world’s new millionaires (1.7 million of the total of 5.2 million) in 2020. There is a class significance to the fact that the US also stands out as the country with the largest death toll from the coronavirus last year. Given that as of December 31, 2020 there were approximately 364,000 coronavirus deaths in the US, this means that for each new millionaire in 2020 there were five people who died of COVID-19 that year.

The Missing and the Dead in El Salvador

Carmen Rodríguez

In El Salvador, reports of dead bodies abandoned on side of the road or in poorly traveled areas are commonplace. The country remains on the list of violent countries in Central America. In May alone, the number of homicides reached 484 deaths.

Meanwhile, the government refuses to treat the issue of disappearances as a problem and its officials prefer to say that the country is a “cool” place to visit. “At last people no longer see El Salvador as the kingdom of war or gangs. Today they see us as the coolest country in Latin America,” said the head of the ruling party’s deputies Cristian Guevara in one of the sessions of the Legislative Assembly.

“Given these delusions of progress and success by the government, it is likely that there will be no thorough or technical investigations to find missing persons in the country and new guidelines will be set up soon, in light of the actions by this ex-cop, to set up a criteria for witnesses and legal benefits. That’s why they have their own prosecutor, to hide the truth and support a permanent propaganda campaign”, said human rights expert Celia Medrano to the Americas Program.

After responding to an emergency call in mid-May, police searched a house and uncovered dozens of bodies, most of them girls and women. The scene was like something out of a horror movie. Detectives who continue to exhume human remains from the back yard believe there are at least 40 bodies at the site. Located in a rural area of Santa Ana in Chalchuapa to the west of the capital, the house is owned by retired former policeman Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez. Salvadoran police officers arrived to investigate allegations that the murder of a woman and her daughter had taken place on the property. While detained, Osorio Chávez confessed to murdering the two people.

The Union of Judicial Employees of El Salvador, which includes workers and forensic experts of Legal Medicine (SEJES) denounced that the director of the agency, Pedro Martinez, ordered the forensic experts not to carry out the tests to determine the causes of death of all the remains found in the graves in Chalchuapa.

“There are protocols to follow, standardized guidelines of how the autopsy procedure is done, it is our main function. And when they tell us to do other types of incomplete examinations, they are biasing the information, they are distorting reality. These are arbitrary and dangerous measures, and we owe it to society to demand robust expert investigations. But information is being centralized”, said María de los Ángeles Álvarez, forensic expert of Medicina Legal, to journalists.

The house contained at least seven graves with human remains. Prior to his May arrest, Osorio Chavez had been investigated for sex crimes and rape. According to police, he was part of a criminal gang operating in the western part of the country in recent years. When there was talk of the involvement of ten other people in the case, the Attorney General’s Office announced that in exchange for their collaboration they had extended the ex-cop the benefit of participating in the case as a protected witness.

Since the news broke, many Salvadorans have traveled to the area where the excavations continue in the hope of getting news, looking for their children, siblings or missing relatives. According to data collected by human rights organizations, so far 5,381 Salvadorans are reported missing.

But the press quickly diverted the public’s attention from the macabre event after President Bukele announced the use of bitcoin as the country’s currency.

Bukele’s government has also been known for hiding and blocking access to information, especially when it comes  to corruption, murders, violence and missing Salvadorans. In April, the security minister, Gustavo Villatoro, said in an interview on a Salvadoran television channel that the figure of disappearances in the country is “a feeling” sparked by the reduction in homicides.

“It is not strange that a government that has achieved a high concentration of power, based on a complex and effective apparatus of lies has as its priority to hide the truth to the detriment of the rights and suffering of victims of such horrendous crimes as the disappearance and forced disappearance of persons,” said Celia Medrano.

Israel Ticas, an experienced forensic expert from the Attorney General’s Office, was punished for confirming to journalists that there were at least 40 bodies and human remains in the ground. Several journalists who covered the discovery told Americas Program that employees of the Presidential House arrived at the site and prevented all non-official journalists from having access to the information.

“At the beginning, the forensic experts on the scene told us that it is very likely that there are more than 40 bodies in the house. But shortly after the media began to arrive, people from the Presidential House arrived and told us that all information would be handled by them and from then on everything has been very hermetic,” said a Salvadoran journalist who was at the house, where excavations are still being carried out to recover more bodies and human remains.

Two weeks later, the Security Minister publicly asked people who have missing relatives not to publish photos and messages denouncing disappearances. He also criticized the use of social media to make these denunciations. Furthermore, a month before the bodies were found in the property of the former policeman, the director of the Salvadoran Police Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, downplayed the importance of the reports of missing persons and denied the data.

It is worth noting that the police chief confirmed that since March there has been an increase in reports or complaints of missing persons, but he said that this is due to missing persons changing addresses or leaving the country without informing their relatives about it. “We have had a slight increase, but in reality these cases have multi-causes, factors cause a person to move from one place to another or leave the country,” assured the police chief.

Neither the president, nor the first lady of El Salvador, nor any other high-ranking government official have spoken or sent any message about the bodies that continue to be found at Osorio Chavez’s house. Moreover, pro-government deputies refused to observe a minute of silence at last week’s Assembly session.

Meanwhile, members of the National Police informed reporters that Osorio Chavez owns another house in Zacatecoluca, north of the Salvadoran capital. They do not rule out the possibility that he was also hiding bodies on this property.

Republican-led states enact fascistic laws that ban the teaching of “divisive concepts”

Renae Cassimeda

In recent months, Republicans in nine states—Idaho, Oklahoma, Iowa, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Montana, Utah and Georgia—have passed fascistic laws or other measures that ban the teaching of what they term “divisive concepts” related to racism and sexism in public school curricula and employee training programs, with some including social class among the topics that are banned.

Texas and Florida have explicitly banned the use of the New York Times’ 1619 Project in curricula, while Idaho, Montana and Florida have banned the use of critical race theory (CRT) in K-12 public schools and higher education.

Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who encouraged the state's school board to ban the 1619 Project and critical race theory (Image Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky)

Additionally, nine states have similar bills that have either been introduced or are already moving through legislatures, with bills in Michigan, Ohio and South Carolina also explicitly banning the use of CRT and the 1619 Project. Another seven states withdrew or deferred legislation on the topic earlier this year, with most set to be reintroduced later this year.

The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) unequivocally condemn these antidemocratic laws. As Marxists, we have fundamental disagreements with the theoretical foundations and historical claims of both CRT and the 1619 Project, but we oppose all efforts to censor them. Only under conditions in which all literature is made available for open debate and discussion can the historical and theoretical issues confronting students and workers be clarified.

The various state bills all use the same model legislation, entitled “The Partisanship Out of Civics Act” (POCA), written by Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and education writer for the right-wing publication National Review. Each of the state bills includes specific language from Section B.6-7 of POCA, prohibiting the use of concepts related to “systemic racism or other like ideas.”

Kurtz’s explanation and defense of POCA, published in the National Review, notes that the act also adapted language from an executive order issued last year by Donald Trump, which banned CRT training for federal government employees and contractors.

Most of the bills and laws do not explicitly refer to or ban CRT but rather ban the teaching of concepts associated with CRT. They can be interpreted by local and state officials as prohibiting a wide range of left-wing and progressive viewpoints. Teachers have already begun to be victimized for supposedly violating these laws, including in Tennessee and Oklahoma.

While large sections of the media have falsely presented these bills as centered solely on the banning of CRT, they, in fact, represent a sweeping attack on First Amendment rights, historical truth and public education.

The bill passed in Tennessee last month, arguably the most far-reaching, specifically targets the teaching of all social antagonisms, class conflict and revolution by prohibiting “promoting or advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government” and “promoting division between, or resentment of, a race, sex, religion, creed, nonviolent political affiliation, social class, or class of people.” Similar language has been included in the Kentucky, Maine, and now withdrawn Arkansas and South Dakota bills.

Wisconsin and South Carolina have proposed legislation that would require educators to publish their curriculum materials on school websites to allow for policing the content of educators’ lessons. The Tennessee and Arkansas laws, as well as proposed bills in Maine and Wisconsin, withhold state funding for schools that “knowingly violate the prohibitions,” and the Kentucky, Maine and Pennsylvania bills subject teachers who violate the law to disciplinary action and termination.

The use of Kurtz’s model legislation underscores the top-down character of this campaign, which involves the leadership of the Republican Party and its backers among the corporate and financial elite. Following the traditions of McCarthyism in the 1940s and 1950s, which sought to ban Marxist literature in the US as part of a broader assault on free speech, the Republicans aim to falsify history to promote a fascistic nationalist mythology at public educational institutions and state government agencies. These right-wing lawmakers are part of the same party that attempted to carry out a coup on January 6 to install Trump as a presidential dictator.

In May, fascist strategist Steve Bannon stated on his podcast, “The path to save the nation is very simple—it’s going to go through the school boards.” A recent article in NBC News notes the role of “dark money” conservative forces pushing to overturn elected school boards, which is also being waged as a campaign against CRT to provide cover for a broader effort to install right-wing and far-right school board members in cities across the US.

There are now at least 165 local and national groups throughout the country that have carried out campaigns to recall school board members deemed too left-wing in at least 50 districts, with more recalls documented in the first six months of this year than the total for any other year on record. Many of these groups evolved out of the right-wing parents’ groups that pushed for schools to reopen at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Republicans’ fascistic attacks on public education have provoked enormous opposition among educators and parents, becoming the most frequent topic of discussion in the various Facebook groups where teachers are active. Teachers correctly see the recent legislation as a gag on what to teach as well as an erasure of history.

In response to a meme posted on CRT, one teacher noted: “While I would not debate this meme understand that we are being censored and that’s not a good thing.” Another commented that the Republicans aim “to limit academic freedom in order to appease a fascistic base” and “conform to a nativist, whitewashed curriculum reminiscent of the Hitler Youth.”

Additionally, over 70 scholarly and educational groups have signed a statement opposing the raft of right-wing legislation, noting that the bills “risk infringing on the right of faculty to teach and of students to learn” and that “a free and open society depends on the unrestricted pursuit and dissemination of knowledge.”

While most educators are not aware of the tenets or scope of critical race theory, officials in the Democratic Party, the teachers unions and the corporate media have responded to the right-wing attacks by defending and promoting CRT and the 1619 Project. In recent weeks, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, who sits on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has endorsed CRT and the 1619 Project in multiple interviews.

In a recent interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC, Nikole Hannah-Jones, lead author of the 1619 Project, framed the Republicans’ laws entirely in racial terms, saying, “[t]hey are clearly designed to stoke white resentment, to really feed into this narrative that white Americans are under attack, that they are the primary victims of racism.” She downplayed the severity of the measures, stating, “Even though the laws seem silly, I don’t think the emotions and the kind of real hysteria they’re intended to evoke is silly at all.”

Both Weingarten and Hannah-Jones, who speak for the Democratic Party, provide cover for the far-reaching attacks on democratic rights being carried out by the Republicans. Both remain silent on the threat of fascism and say nothing about the clear efforts to create a national patriotic mythology through historical falsification.

Weingarten and National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle, who collectively represent roughly 4.7 million educators, have done nothing to mobilize the enormous opposition among teachers, parents and students to the antidemocratic measures being enacted or proposed in half of all US states.

In this, they are merely continuing their years-long policy of isolating teachers opposed to the broader assault on public education. This was expressed throughout the wave of teachers strikes in 2018-19, when the national teachers unions conspired with state officials to end each strike as quickly as possible, and even more sharply over the past year as they isolated every wildcat strike that broke out in opposition to the premature reopening of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The national teachers unions, as well as their state and local affiliates, are corporatist bureaucracies embedded in the state apparatus. They fear above all any mobilization of educators and the working class fighting to defend public education and democratic rights.

Berlin: Food delivery workers strike to defend sacked colleague

Markus Salzmann & Ulrich Rippert

On 9 June, about one hundred workers employed by the Berlin food delivery service known as Gorillas took spontaneous strike action to defend a fellow worker who had been summarily sacked. The affected worker is one of the company’s so-called “riders.”

Gorillas evidently operates on the principle of “hire and fire.” On Twitter, the Gorilla employee concerned, Santiago, described what had taken place. On Wednesday morning, at the end of his shift, he was approached by a woman on the pavement in front of the delivery service’s warehouse at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. The woman did not identify herself, but merely declared he was fired with immediate effect. The employee was stunned and outraged and sought to inform fellow workers of what had taken place.

The news spread like wildfire. A few hours later, almost 70 Gorillas workers from different shifts and locations gathered in front of the delivery service’s warehouse and demanded an explanation from management. When no explanation was forthcoming, the workers spontaneously decided to go on strike. The riders piled up their bicycles to form a barricade in front of the entrance to the warehouse and access was blocked.

In order to defuse the situation, a manager from the company decided to halt operations at the “Charlie” location and discuss with the workers. In the event, this discussion turned out to be “very unsatisfactory.” The workers decided to extend their struggle and formed a bicycle convoy of about 100. The strikers went to the company’s main depot in Berlin-Mitte to blockade the food warehouse there but were prevented from doing so by a large police presence.

In addition to demanding the reinstatement of Santiago, the strikers called for the abolition of the company’s six-month probationary period and an end to all arbitrary dismissals. In future, there should be no more dismissals without three prior warnings.

"Solidarity with Santiago"

The pretext for the dismissal was Santiago’s failure to attend work that day at the arranged time. In fact, the young man had informed his shift supervisor (Rider-Op) that he would be late. Contrary to management’s statements that there had been “negative feedback” about him, colleagues stated that Santiago was one of the best-ranked riders. At a protest rally against his dismissal, it was stressed that his sacking should be understood as a threat against all workers.

The management uses the six-month probationary period, which is very long for such a job, to fire employees without reason. Gorillas founder and CEO Kağan Sümer brazenly told the media that if “someone is fired, it is in the interest of our community.”

The strikes and blockades continued at the Prenzlauer Berg location on June 10. Workers had earlier carried out a spontaneous strike, last February, after management failed to guarantee secure conditions for riders following the harsh onset of winter.

Gorillas promises to deliver food to customers within 10 minutes. The company hired thousands of workers within a short period of time. The riders are mostly young people and students, often from abroad, who urgently need a job to make ends meet. Gorillas pays just 10.50 euros per hour for the strenuous work involved. Consequently, work and cost pressures are considerable. Based on a delivery fee of 1.80 euros, the ordered goods have to be packed within minutes and delivered quickly in all weather and traffic conditions.

Under this enormous pressure, working conditions are almost unbearable. Riders are currently racing through Berlin in the middle of a heat wave. The German television station ZDF describes some of the consequences as follows: Back pain due to heavy, bulky deliveries; assignments at short notice that make any sort of private life extremely difficult; and uncertain wage payments and permanent pressure.

Der Spiegel also describes the working conditions as “in part hellish.” Several other delivery services have also been reported to maintain dangerous working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Distance regulations are difficult to observe in the narrow warehouses, and disinfectants and FFP2 masks are also not available everywhere.

A female driver described the hard work to Zeit-Online. She complained about the sometimes very heavy loads, such as bottles in backpacks, which have to be transported over cobblestones on bikes without suspension. Although no more than ten kilograms should be carried per order, this figure is not checked. The heavy transports have caused bruises on her back. Several employees wrote an open letter to complain: “We are drivers, not racehorses.”

In order to survive the pressure of competition, delivery services are resorting to increasingly drastic means to monitor workers. The food delivery service Lieferando was recently severely criticized after reports that its couriers were being monitored by a tracking app. To work for the company, employees have to download the app onto their mobile phones, but it remains unclear what data is being retrieved by the management.

In fact, the business model of the start-up is built on the principle of the extreme exploitation of its workers. Gorillas was founded in the spring of 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. Investors poured more than 280 million euros into the food delivery service in just four months, enabling it to achieve a market valuation of one billion dollars in record time. This ranks the company as a so-called “unicorn” in business circles.

The delivery services market has grown rapidly in recent years, with no end in sight. Several competitors vying with Gorilla for market share are waiting in the wings. The Turkish company Getir, for example, has now expanded its operations to Germany.

Getir is described as a pioneer in express food delivery. In 2015, the company was founded in Istanbul and experienced enormous growth during the pandemic last year. Orders can currently be placed via the app in thirty Turkish cities. Since the end of January, the firm has expanded to London and Amsterdam. In addition to the American market, the focus is now also on Germany and France. To this end, the company raised a total of $550 million from investors. Getir currently has a market valuation of $7.5 billion.

Other delivery services with allegedly even shorter delivery times and lower costs are about to enter the market. The delivery service Flink is also in direct competition with Gorillas. The start-up, built in cooperation with the German retail giant Rewe, also raised 245 million euros in start-up capital in a very short time and is now active in 18 cities across Germany.

Levels of fierce competition were already evident in the past with other delivery services. For example, the delivery service Lieferando achieved monopoly status through its takeover of Foodora and the demise of Deliveroo. The Dutch parent company of the food delivery service, Just Eat Takeway, is increasing its turnover by more than half, to around 2.4 billion euros in 2020.

The Gorillas workers’ industrial action has received wide support, with dozens of statements of solidarity from many countries appearing on social media such as Twitter. It is becoming increasingly clear that similar forms of extreme exploitation are affecting more and more people. A new, important layer of the working class has emerged: young, militant and very well connected internationally.

Miserable working conditions, where maximum performance is demanded and often less than the minimum wage is paid, together with no social security, no sickness benefit or pension contributions, etc.—these conditions are no longer an exception, but increasingly the rule.

Many companies in Germany’s leading industrial sectors, such as the auto and auto supply industry, electrical industry, steel processing and others, have used the pandemic as an opportunity to implement mass dismissals, wage cuts and a deterioration of working conditions. Parts of companies are being outsourced and workers forced to work under far worse conditions.

Ruling circles and the German government are very concerned about the growing willingness to fight, as shown in the spontaneous Gorilla strike. They are afraid that the militancy of the precariously employed workers will combine with growing resistance against mass dismissals and wage cuts in industrial enterprises, transport companies and public administration.

To counter this, trade union-led works councils are to be formed in delivery services and other areas of precarious employment. The aim is to mobilize the unions to prevent spontaneous strikes and any broader mobilization of workers. To this end a so-called “Works Council Modernization Act” was passed in the Bundestag last month to facilitate the formation of works councils. At Gorillas, the formation of a works council was initiated earlier this year in close cooperation with Germany’s Food and Hostelry union (NGG).

The Socialist Equality Party (SGP) rejects this initiative. A works council led by the NGG will not improve working conditions. Wherever the NGG or other unions have influence, wages and working conditions have invariably deteriorated in recent years.

Germany’s long-standing Works Constitution Act obliges works councils to “cooperate in a spirit of trust” and to comply with all agreements, and the works council is prohibited from calling strikes and other industrial action. Instead, it is obliged to work for the “welfare of the company.”

The formation of a works council will not abolish slave labour at Gorillas, but rather regulate and cement it. At the same time, the organizing of spontaneous strikes is made much more difficult because during the term of contract agreements workers are legally obliged to keep the peace, i.e., a ban on strikes.

We urge workers at Gorillas to form an action committee based on the tradition of independent workers’ councils, free from the influence of the union bureaucracies, which function as a company police force. Such an action committee is able to link up with workers in other production and administrative sectors and other countries, to develop a common strategy, not to “humanize” slave labour and make it bearable, but rather abolish it.