South Africa’s pandemic resurgence fuels opposition to the ANC government

Jean Shaoul

The African National Congress (ANC) government of President Cyril Ramaphosa has been forced to implement partial lockdown measures as Africa’s most industrialised country faces a third wave of the pandemic.

It takes place amid mounting anger over the ANC’s handling of the public health crisis and vaccine rollout, systemic corruption within the ruling party and the escalating economic crisis.

Health workers arrive with a patient at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital's COVID-19 facility, in Johannesburg, Monday, June 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Shiraaz Mohamed)

South Africa has reported more than 155,000 new cases in the last week, double the number of the previous week, as the official total of deaths approaches 60,000 following two earlier waves of the pandemic that peaked in July 2020 and January this year. This latest surge has already affected four of the country’s nine provinces and is likely to be far worse than the first two, coinciding with the onset of the southern hemisphere’s winter.

South Africa has been the worst hit country on the African continent, even according to official figures that are widely believed to be a gross underestimate given the lack of testing and standardised reporting procedures for registering deaths. Excess mortality figures indicate that another 100,000 people, if not more, have died directly or indirectly due to the pandemic.

Gauteng province, the economic powerhouse of the country that is home to South Africa’s two most populous cities, Johannesburg and Pretoria, is the centre of the latest surge, accounting for 60 percent of new cases. Speaking on Monday, David Makhura, Gauteng’s regional premier, said, “The house is under fire” and hospital admissions were rising rapidly.

Ramaphosa was forced to admit the country’s healthcare system is collapsing when introducing a few totally inadequate restrictions that include the closure of non-essential establishments such as restaurants, bars and fitness centres by 10pm, a one-hour extension of the curfew, a 250people limit on outdoor gatherings and 100 indoors, and a ban on alcohol. He said, “Our priority now is to make sure there are enough hospital beds, enough health workers, enough ventilators and enough oxygen to give the best possible care to every person who needs it… The massive surge in new infections means that we must once again tighten restrictions on the movement of persons and gatherings.”

One large hospital was forced to close earlier this year after a fire, while other large facilities have had to close due to a shortage of trained staff, with doctors making dozens of telephone calls to secure a bed for their critically ill patients.

The army’s medical personnel are to be deployed to Gauteng province to help healthcare workers and carry out community testing and contact tracing. Last year at the start of the outbreak, the ANC government deployed more than 70,000 soldiers to enforce one of the world’s strictest lockdowns with extreme police brutality in a bid to stem the fall in corporate profits and the country’s pending insolvency.

Like most African countries, South Africa has suffered from the global shortage of vaccines. This has been exacerbated by the World Trade Organization’s refusal, at the behest of the US, UK, Germany, France and Sweden on behalf of Big Pharma, to lift patent restrictions on vaccine production, as well as the “vaccine apartheid” whereby the rich countries bought up most of the available doses and far more than they needed.

With only about 500,000 people of the country’s 60 million population vaccinated, mostly healthcare workers in a trial for Johnson & Johnson, the government is belatedly trying to vaccinate 5 million people by the end of June with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab and 40 million people by the end of 2022.

South Africa has fallen behind many poorer countries, including neighbouring Zimbabwe and Angola as well as Ethiopia, after suspending the use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine in February and the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in April—over exaggerated safety concerns—while exporting vaccines manufactured under licence in the country. This was compounded last week by the need to discard two million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine manufactured in the US due to contamination of one its components, following a ruling by the United States Food and Drug Administration

Public anger is mounting over the endemic corruption of the ANC. Funds intended for the victims of the pandemic have been systematically looted by the party and its allies. Earlier this month, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize was forced to resign as an investigation into his alleged “impropriety” in the awarding of Covid-19 contracts gets under way.

Last November, Ace Magashule, the ANC secretary general and, as one of the party’s top six most important members, Ramaphosa’s main rival, appeared in court charged with corruption, money laundering and fraud in relation to the looting of public funds under former President Jacob Zuma. Some $32 billion was reportedly stolen during Zuma’s period in office, with Magashule implicated in several other corruption scandals. Zuma is facing corruption charges over a 1999 deal arms deal brokered when he was deputy president.

Ramaphosa, the billionaire and former trade union leader who was elected president in 2017 making noises about opposing corruption, has overseen an escalating transfer of wealth from the working class to the top layers of society. The pandemic has exacerbated South Africa’s already serious economic recession that has hammered the mining and manufacturing sectors.

While the economy was in recession before the first coronavirus wave, the pandemic has vastly exacerbated the crisis, forcing five to six million people (15 percent of adults), mainly manual workers, to leave the townships and go back to their home villages. Many households ran out of money for food, doubling the rate prevailing in 2017, even as the government’s special grant, set up to help those without social security, expired in January.

The economy contracted 7 percent last year amid the impact of the global recession, the fall in demand for minerals and raw materials, South Africa’s main exports, and lockdown restrictions. It follows a years-long decline in GDP per capita as growth failed to keep pace with the increasing population. The government’s budget deficit for 2020-21 reached 11 percent of GDP, with more than a fifth of the budget going to servicing debt that has reached nearly 65 percent of GDP.

With one of the highest levels of income inequality in the world, South Africa’s most affluent 20 percent of the population take more than 68 percent of income. Income per capita in Gauteng is almost twice that in mostly rural provinces like Limpopo and Eastern Cape. According to government statistics, around one third of South African workers are now unemployed, trapping millions in poverty and contributing to the obscene levels of inequality that persist nearly three decades after the end of apartheid and the start of ANC rule in 1994.

The government faces a militant working class that is vehemently opposed to its pledge to freeze public sector wages—one of the conditions it must meet to reduce the budget deficit and secure new loans—with the courts upholding the government’s decision not to pay out a wage increase due from April 2020 under the 2018 three-year agreement. This is the subject of ongoing talks with the trade unions that, like their counterparts elsewhere, act to police the working class in the interests of the financial elite. The ANC itself faces industrial action as its staff picket offices throughout South Africa, with staff walking out in protest over the late payment of wages, insurance fund arrears, and the lack of a pay increase.

Growing homelessness in New Zealand

Tom Peters

The latest Knight Frank Global House Price Index showed that New Zealand house prices in the first quarter of 2021 were an astonishing 22.1 percent higher than 12 months earlier. The average global increase was 7.3 percent, the fastest rise recorded since 2006, in the lead-up to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis.

A modified container in Wellington, advertised for rent at $390 a week. (Source: Twitter)

According to the Real Estate Institute of NZ, the situation is even worse: house prices increased by a median $200,000 between May 2020 and May 2021, 32.3 percent, to reach $820,000. In Auckland, one of the least affordable cities in the world, the median price is now $1.148 million.

Since 2017, when Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party-led government was first elected, its promises to address New Zealand’s housing crisis have proven again and again to be completely fraudulent. In fact, the out-of-control bubble is fueled by the government’s policies, including ultra-low taxes for property investors, along with the Reserve Bank’s record low interest rates and quantitative easing policies that have pumped billions of dollars into the commercial banks over the past year.

KPMG reported that NZ banks made a record $1.64 billion in total profits in the first quarter of 2021, largely driven by home lending. Meanwhile, it has become impossible for most working-class people to save for a deposit on a house. Home ownership has dropped from 74 percent of households in 1991 to just 64.5 percent in 2018, the lowest level since 1951.

Rents are also soaring. The New Zealand Herald recently reported that, adjusted for inflation, residential rents in Auckland have risen by 45 percent since the year 2000, reaching an average rent of $564 a week in March this year. In Wellington, the increase was 53 percent, to an average of $517.

The lack of affordable housing is a major factor fueling anger among workers, including nurses and healthcare workers who recently held a nationwide strike against the government’s pay freeze.

The number of people waiting for public housing has quadrupled under Labour to 23,687 households. The real extent of homelessness, however, is much greater. Estimates based on the 2018 census, by University of Otago researchers and the Ministry of Housing, found that 102,123 people, 2.2 percent of the population, are “severely housing deprived,” almost half of them under the age of 25.

This included 41,724 people “living without shelter, in temporary accommodation or sharing accommodation,” and 60,399 “in uninhabitable housing that was lacking one of six basic amenities: tap water that is safe to drink; electricity; cooking facilities; a kitchen sink; a bath or shower; a toilet.” Researchers said the figures were likely to be underestimated, given that homeless people would have had difficulty taking part in the mostly-online census.

In March (the most recent available figures), 5,315 homeless people were living in motel rooms subsidised by the government as “emergency housing.”

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with Carol (not her real name), who is in her fifties and has been living in a two-room motel unit with her adult son for seven months. She explained that she lost her house following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Like thousands of other people, the money she received from the government insurer, the Earthquake Commission, was not enough to pay for repairs.

After also losing her job, Carol said, “I went all around Canterbury looking for work. I did everything I could to keep my house.” Finally, “I sold my house of 30 years that was valued, pre-quake, at $350,000. I walked away with $150,000, and $20,000 went to pay bills. I’m just one of many who got ripped off.” In the years since then, she has suffered serious mental health issues, and spent some time living with family before eventually moving into emergency housing.

The government deducts one quarter of the income of every adult in emergency housing, and provides large subsidies to motel owners. Carol said the owner was “making at least $1000 per room a week,” but refused to provide decent services. “Even though we’ve asked for extra things like washing machines, we don’t get it. You pay for your storage, you pay for your laundry. The fridge is a minibar fridge, you can’t freeze anything.” The motel has just one washing machine shared between more than 20 units, several of which have more than one occupant.

Carol continued: “People in emergency housing have no rights. They can change the rules whenever they want… many people here feel like this place is nothing more than a prison.” She said the owner, as well as getting thousands of dollars from the government, is hoarding food and other items donated by locals to help the residents.

“The people here are no different from other people, we come from all walks of life,” Carol said. “Some of us work, some don’t, one woman has just split up from a violent relationship. It annoys me when people say everybody in emergency housing deserves to be there. We’re just an unlucky bunch.”

Carol’s son works for just $21 an hour; barely above the minimum wage and not enough to pay for a private rental. They are also spending nearly $100 a week to store their belongings. Both are on the waiting list for public housing, but Carol had no idea when, or if, they would be given a place.

Carol said she preferred the Labour Party to the National Party, but added that Labour was “offering people a bandaid for a broken leg.” She said Prime Minister Ardern should learn from the first Labour government, which built tens of thousands of state houses during the 1930s and 40s.

The Labour Party long ago abandoned such reformist policies, which were enacted to stave off the very real threat of a revolutionary movement of the working class. The government says it will increase public housing from 67,200 units in 2018 to 81,300 in 2024; but even if the target is reached, this would only accommodate just over half those currently on the waiting list.

Another resident and former staff member at the motel, who we will call Valerie, told the WSWS: “I worked here for about six months as a cleaner on minimum wage. It started out good but then it got sloppy. We weren’t being paid on time and we’d go for days without pay… My automatic payments weren’t being honoured, and [the owner] just didn’t really care.”

She said people in emergency housing were “looked down upon like we are scumbags, and we’re not. We’re just stuck in a rut and there’s nothing for us to rent.” Valerie had applied for public housing “but because I’m a single person with no dependent children, I’m not a priority.”

The motel residents included a mother with six children, who had been there for several months. Valerie explained that the overcrowded environment was totally unsuitable for children. “Not everybody gets along… The kids are exposed to violence and it’s hard for kids to watch domestic arguments going on left, right and centre. You’ve got nowhere to shelter your children from this.”

Valerie said she had “given up following what the government is doing.” She felt that the rich were getting richer, and the government was giving too much taxpayers’ money to property owners who were exploiting the emergency housing system for profit.

Turkish TPI workers sacked after rebelling against union-backed contract

Hasan Yıldırım

TPI Composites workers in Turkey, who were preparing to go on strike on June 22, are facing layoffs after the Petrol-İş union affiliated with the Türk-İş confederation secretly signed a sellout contract at the beginning of June.

Those who were dismissed were workers who came to the fore in mass protests against the agreement, who came into conflict with the union and resigned from it. These layoffs were imposed by the company in open collaboration with the union.

The union betrayal and mass protest by workers at TPI, a US-based global wind-blade manufacturer, comes shortly after Bedaş workers in Istanbul went on a wildcat strike, defying an official ban on strike activity in the electricity sector to oppose poverty wages imposed by a contract negotiated with a pro-company union.

The surge of militancy among workers in Turkey is part of an international resurgence of the class struggle. The Volvo strike in the US is leading this global upsurge, where workers formed a rank-and-file committee to advance their demands and conduct the fight independently of the pro-company United Auto Workers (UAW) union.

The collective bargaining process at TPI started more than five months ago, and workers carried out workplace actions for 60 days after the negotiations failed. During this period, the workers took actions such as walking in the factory, not working overtime and making noise in the cafeteria. The union aimed to appease the workers with such ineffective “actions.”

At the end of May, due to the failure to reach an agreement in the contract negotiations for the TPI factories in Çiğli Sasalı and Menemen Free Zone, Izmir, where a total of 3,800 workers are employed, the union announced that the strike would begin on June 22.

In his statement on the negotiations, Petrol-İş Izmir head Orhan Zengin said: “We have reached a consensus on almost all items [in the contract] except the wages, but we have a problem on the wages. … We asked for a 30 percent raise, but the offer was 20 percent.” He also added “Our strike will begin on June 22. Until then, we are open to negotiations.”

In Turkey, where the official inflation rate is 16 percent and the real rate is over 30 percent, a 30 percent wage increase would only prevent a decline in real wages. However, on June 3, the union hurriedly signed a contract with the company without informing the workers or holding any votes.

As a clear sign of contempt to workers, the union did not even bother to explain to them that it had signed a contract: the workers learned of it from a shift supervisor in the factory.

The union’s betrayal caused great anger among TPI workers.

Zengin made a statement to appease the workers at a factory, claiming that they signed the contract in Ankara under the authority of the Labour Ministry. The union bureaucrat baldly demanded total submission to the state: “Since we are conducting the negotiation in the eye of the Ministry, there is no opportunity for discussion. You have to bow down. ... We are the most numerous, we have the power, but you bow to the law and order there. There is nothing else to do.”

The workers, angry at the union’s betrayal, protested and stormed out before Zengin could finish his speech. Petrol-İş announced on its website that it had signed the agreement two days later, on June 5, but refrained from giving any details on the content of the contract.

A worker told the daily Evrensel: “There is great anger at the factory ... Everyone is waiting for the resignation of the local head, Orhan Zengin. They want the representatives to resign. There is chaos in the factory, we feel betrayed. We want the union leadership, including the representatives in the factory, to resign and to have an early election.”

TPI Composites is one of the world’s leading wind blade manufacturers, having facilities in the US, Mexico, Denmark, Turkey, China and India with nearly 15,000 workers in total. According to its own reports, TPI Composites “accounted for approximately 32 percent of all sold onshore wind blades on a MW-basis globally excluding China in 2020.”

Amid a raging global pandemic, it “reached a record high” in 2020, “with nearly $1.7 billion in net sales and more than 10,600 wind blades produced,” in collaboration with the unions to keep workers on the job to create profits despite unsafe conditions.

After the pro-company contract was signed, TPI Composites took action to punish workers who dared to challenge their collaboration with the union. Workers said a total of 32 workers in the two factories were sent on unpaid leave. In addition, two workers in one factory were dismissed for the “crime” of disrupting production; another three were dismissed without any explanation. The total number of laid off workers is said to be 10.

Workers showed their reaction on a Facebook page named the Association of Petrochemical Workers. One worker wrote, “We have to show that we are not slaves. If we are workers, we must nail what is rightfully ours. … We will be strong and organized! Then there will be no voices of threats, pressure, or other fears.”

Another one stated, “The management and the union lords stole our children’s happiness, stole their needs. Moreover, one [union] is getting rich with our dues and the other [company] with our sweat. Let’s get into action now!” One other TPI worker also announced their new demands: “Take back those who were fired. 10 percent additional raise. Orhan Zengin should resign. Working conditions should be improved.”

One worker accused the union of giving a list of workers who should be laid off by the company. “We were fired because we opposed [the union-backed contract]. The union gave our names to the management as trouble makers, and then the company fired us.”

Another worker wrote, “The sole purpose of trade union officials in the 21st century is to fill their own pockets.”

As the social onslaught of the ruling class escalates amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused millions of deaths due to their herd immunity policy, the working class everywhere is entering into struggle in defiance of corporatist unions.

Against transnational corporations like TPI Composites, which organize production and plan strategy against workers on a global scale with the full support of capitalist governments, workers need an international strategy based on a socialist perspective.

Migrants killed and wounded by far-right attacks in Spain

Alice Summers

On Sunday, June 13, Moroccan migrant Younes Bilal was murdered by a retired soldier in the Spanish town of Mazarrón, in the southeastern region of Murcia. The 52-year-old assailant, identified only as Carlos Patricio B.M., reportedly shouted “fucking Moors!” (a slur against people of North African origin) as he shot Bilal three times in the chest at point-blank range.

The border of Morocco and Spain at the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, May 18, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy]

Bilal had been meeting with friends at a café in Mazarrón when B.M. allegedly began verbally abusing one of the café’s waitresses, screaming at her for speaking “with a group of Muslims.” After Bilal got up to defend the waitress, Carlos reportedly stormed out, returning 20 minutes later with a gun and shooting Bilal dead.

Only a couple of days later, an Ecuadorian woman was stabbed as she queued outside a food bank in the town of Santa Lucía de Cartagena, also in Murcia. The attacker allegedly screamed: “Sudaca! [A derogatory term for a woman from South America] Immigrants are stealing our food!” as she drove a knife into the woman’s back. The unnamed victim had to be hospitalised, but fortunately survived.

Yesterday, it was reported that Momoun Koutaibi, a 22-year-old Moroccan auto mechanic, is still in a coma after someone struck his head with an iron bar on the job on June 5. Another 40-year-old Moroccan citizen was also stabbed last Tuesday in Cartagena.

The “progressive” Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government bears political responsibility for the recent upsurge in xenophobic, anti-migrant attacks in Spain. Their brutal crackdown on immigration has provided a fertile breeding ground for far-right, racist agitation against refugees, and given unofficial state backing to fascistic forces to turn to violence with increasing frequency.

Under the aegis of the PSOE-Podemos government, migrants and refugees who make it to the Spanish Canary Islands on makeshift rafts and boats are held in appalling conditions in camps. Children are separated from their mothers, and underage migrants are subjected to invasive “medical” tests to determine their age—including forcing them to strip naked and undergo examinations of their genitalia.

At least two minors have died in Spanish centres for unaccompanied and underage migrants in recent weeks. One of the minors, a 17-year-old boy from Morocco housed in a centre in Écija, Seville, for three years, died of a “pulmonary edema,” elDiario.es reported. The other young man, whose age was unknown, apparently committed suicide at the Miguel de Mañara de Montequinto centre in Seville.

The brutal attacks in Murcia are only the latest in a series of increasingly violent assaults targeting migrants and refugees in Spain. In February, a mosque in the Murcian town of San Javier was defaced with graffiti reading “Death to Islam.” The attacker also attempted to set fire to the building, but was arrested before the blaze could catch hold.

Earlier this year, several migrants trapped on the Canary Islands were injured when fascist thugs attacked them with pellet guns, machetes, rocks and metal batons. At the time, various WhatsApp chats and videos were leaked to the press in which far-right individuals discussed plans to kill and maim migrant workers. One used the messaging platform to declare: “The Moors are gonna die, I’m telling you this straight.”

The immediate spark of the assaults on the Canary Islands was a campaign of far-right hoax videos on social media and WhatsApp, falsely purporting to show migrants in the Canary Islands robbing shops, churches or restaurants. These efforts to depict migrants as criminals were promoted by the fascist Vox party, which launched a xenophobic “Stop Islamicisation!” campaign on Twitter, blaming a supposed wave of crime on a migrant “invasion.”

While these horrific acts of violence are incited by the far right, they have been facilitated by vicious anti-migrant policies of the PSOE-Podemos government. It built a vast network of concentration camps across Spain, and particularly on the Canary Islands, in which migrants are deliberately imprisoned in unsanitary, inhumane conditions pending deportation.

In mid-June, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Doctors of the World issued a scathing report on the conditions inside detention camps on the Canary Islands, denouncing the overcrowding, poor nutrition and spread of disease in these facilities. According to the report, many migrants in these centres suffered from anxiety attacks, insomnia, constipation, vomiting, diarrhoea, outbreaks of scabies, fungi, chilblains, headaches or back pain.

Overcrowding, lack of medical attention and poor sanitation facilities had made these camps ideal environments for the spread of COVID-19. Doctors of the World emphasised: “In the majority of these Emergency centres … people sleep 30 to a tent without the minimum safety distance of a metre and a half [being respected], while the lack of hygiene conditions means there is a significant risk of contagion.”

Separately, anonymous workers at an immigration centre run by the NGO Fundación Responsabilidad Social Siglo XXI wrote to the Mogán City Council (Gran Canaria) on June 10, claiming sexual and physical abuse of minors and adults was widespread at the facility. They alleged that prostitution of underage migrants was occurring and denounced site management for “allowing repeated and unjustified psychological and physical attacks on young people, ranging from insults and harassment to intimidation and physical restraints.”

The squalid living conditions and proliferation of sexual violence are not accidental consequences of a sudden influx of migrants or of the excesses of unscrupulous camp staff. They flow directly from the policy pursued by the PSOE-Podemos government, backed by the European Union, based on the reactionary notion of a “pull factor”—i.e., that humane treatment of migrants should be discouraged, as it would only encourage more to come.

Only weeks before the attacks in Murcia, the PSOE-Podemos government, backed by the European Union (EU), deployed the army to drive back migrants seeking to cross the border between Morocco and Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta. Thousands of migrants attempted to cross into the enclave in only a few hours, with most swimming around the six-metre fence that juts out into the sea, or walking across at low tide.

In response, the Spanish government sent in hundreds of soldiers in armoured vehicles, and mobilised over 200 riot police to reinforce the 1,000-strong police force already stationed in Ceuta. Soldiers and police used batons to clear migrants from the beach and threw smoke bombs to discourage others from crossing. At least one migrant drowned in the sea.

Echoing the rhetoric of Vox, PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez denounced the influx of migrants as “an attack on Spain’s borders.” Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo accused Morocco of “aggression.”

The PSOE-Podemos government already has the blood of thousands of migrants on its hands. With the Spanish ruling elite effectively shutting off any legally sanctioned migration route into the country, the Canary Island sea crossing has become the most deadly route into Europe, surpassing the Mediterranean Sea crossings to Italy and Greece, which have claimed tens of thousands of lives over the last years.

According to the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR) charity, at least 850 migrants died trying to reach the Canary Islands in 2020—fully 60 percent of the 1,417 who died on the way to Europe last year.

Horrific as these figures already are, they are widely acknowledged to be a significant underestimate of the true scale of the slaughter. Other NGOs calculate that over 2,000 migrants died on the Canary Island route alone last year. According to CEAR’s figures, four times as many migrants drown attempting the sea crossing to the Canary Islands, as a proportion of all the migrants arriving on the islands, than on any other route to Europe.

After a year, Indian court grants bail to three student activists arrested on bogus “terrorism” charges

Deepal Jayasekera

The Delhi High Court has granted bail to three student activists arrested by the Delhi police one year ago on bogus “terrorism” charges under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). They have been victimized as part of the vicious legal vendetta India’s Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has mounted against opponents of its class war and communalist policies, including the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

Burnt shops at Shiv Vihar after the Delhi riots [Wikimedia Commons]

Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha were arrested by the Delhi police, which is under the direct control of Modi’s Home Minister and chief henchman, Amit Shah, in May 2020. They were detained on the basis of frame-up charges in relation to the so-called “Delhi riot conspiracy case” and later booked under the UAPA. Narwal and Kalita are students at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and Tanha is from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) University.

The real reason for their arrests and detention was their involvement in the anti-CAA protests, which swept across India in late 2019 and early 2020. These three students and many other anti-CAA protesters arrested by the Delhi police have been falsely blamed by the authorities for the communal riots that convulsed parts of northeast Delhi for four days, beginning February 23, 2020. The riots—whose victims were overwhelmingly poor Muslims—were incited by BJP officials and facilitated and, in some cases, joined by police.

The CAA, pushed through the national parliament by Modi and his supremacist BJP in December 2019, discriminates against Muslims by defining Indian citizenship on an explicitly religious basis for the first time in the country’s history. The CAA provides an automatic path to citizenship for non-Muslim immigrants from the main Muslim countries in South Asia—Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan—who arrived in India before the end of December 2014. However, Muslim immigrants from these same countries and all others from the region are excluded from its provisions and liable to expulsion.

The CAA is part of a vicious communal campaign mounted by the BJP against India’s Muslim minority. During the campaign for the April-May 2019 parliamentary elections, in which the BJP won re-election, Amit Shah, then the BJP’s president, repeatedly denounced Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh as “termites” and vowed that if the BJP was reelected, they would be thrown into the Bay of Bengal.

On August 5, 2019, the Modi government moved to scrap the limited semi-autonomous constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state. It placed the whole state under a brutal military lockdown. One year later to the day, Modi laid the foundation stone for a temple devoted to the mythical Hindu god, Ram, on the site of the Babri Masjid, which was razed to the ground by a mob of Hindu fanatics incited and directed by BJP leaders and associated Hindu supremacist organizations in December 1992. This major escalation of the BJP’s Hindu communal campaign was approved in advance by the Indian Supreme Court in a verdict issued in November 2019.

Rammed through parliament in a matter of days in December 2019, the Modi government’s anti-Muslim CAA was met with widespread opposition throughout the country, but especially in the national capital Delhi. Workers, youth and intellectuals joined the protests, which cut across religious, ethnic and caste-communal lines.

Fearing that the anti-CAA movement would intersect with growing working-class opposition to its austerity measures and other pro-investor policies, the Modi government doubled down on its effort to whip up Hindu communalism, with the aim of dividing the working class and mobilizing its far-right supporters as shock troops against it.

Pushed onto the back foot, the BJP-led central and state governments unleashed lethal police violence against the anti-CAA protesters, while fomenting communalist reaction with crude denunciations of their opponents as anti-Indian and pro-Pakistani. This culminated in the Delhi riots. Directly instigated by local BJP leaders, they resulted in the deaths of at least 53 people, the injuring of hundreds and the destruction of scores of homes and businesses.

Seeking to turn reality on its head, the Modi government subsequently directed the police to frame up anti-CAA protest leaders, Muslim and Hindu alike, for the Delhi riots. Dozens of government opponents have been arrested on bogus charges of being involved in a broader “conspiracy” to foment the Delhi riots, while the true culprits in and around the BJP go free. Underscoring the vindictiveness of the authorities, a pregnant JMI student, Zafoora Zargar, was jailed from April through June 2020 in the midst of the surging COVID-19 pandemic.

Narwal, Kalita and Tanha are just three of scores of people facing what are widely conceded, even by much of the corporate media, to be utterly bogus charges under a draconian “anti-terrorism” law. In its June 15 ruling granting them bail, the Delhi High Court said: “[I]t seems, that in its anxiety to suppress dissent, in the mind of the State, the line between the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest and terrorist activity seems to be getting somewhat blurred. If this mindset gains traction, it would be a sad day for democracy.”

The High Court ruling reflects concerns within sections of the ruling class and its political establishment that the BJP government has gone too far in its legal vendetta against its political opponents. It fears that such a transparently bogus use of the UAPA’s draconian provisions to victimize government opponents will dangerously erode the credibility of the bourgeois “democratic” state, its courts and police in the eyes of working people.

The High Court verdict is also driven by concerns that if the Modi government is not chastened, it could use the UAPA or other authoritarian measures against its opponents within the political establishment, further destabilizing bourgeois rule. The BJP has repeatedly accused the leaders of the parliamentary opposition of being “anti-national,” suggesting that their criticisms of the government are akin to “treason,” and as part of its 2019 coup against Kashmir it arbitrarily detained the principal leaders of the pro-Indian Kashmiri regionalist parties for months without charge.

Expressing concern about “foisting (the) extremely grave and serious penal provisions” of the UAPA “frivolously upon people,” the Delhi High Court justices warned that “wanton use of serious penal provisions would only trivialise them.”

Further elaborating on its advice to the Modi government that it should use the UAPA more sparingly, the court said: “Notwithstanding the fact that the definition of ‘terrorist act’ in section 15 UAPA is wide and even somewhat vague, the phrase must partake of the essential character of terrorism and the phrase ‘terrorist act’ cannot be permitted to be casually applied to criminal acts or omissions that fall squarely within the definition of conventional offences as defined inter alia under the IPC [Indian Penal Code].”

The UAPA was introduced by a Congress Party government in December 1967 amid concerns that mounting political opposition could not be contained and suppressed through existing legislation. It contains deliberately vague definitions of “terrorism,” so as to facilitate mass repression of political opponents, and successive governments, led by both the Congress and BJP, have used its draconian provisions to suppress popular opposition.

One of the most prominent recent examples is the case of five left-wing intellectuals—Varavara Rao, Arun Ferreira, Vernon Gonsalves, Sudha Bharadwaj and Gautam Navlakha—whom the BJP placed under house arrest in August 2018 and have since undergone lengthy incarceration. Without presenting a shred of credible evidence, the police and BJP leaders have accused the five of being “urban Naxals,” suggesting they are in cahoots with the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Indian state.

The Indian government and Delhi police are not about to accept the High Court’s decision to bail out the student activists. Immediately after the High Court decision, a Delhi police spokesperson said: “We are not satisfied with the interpretation of the provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act by the Hon’ble High Court in a matter concerned with grant of Bail. We are proceeding with filing a Special Leave Petition before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India.”

The Supreme Court, which has a long record of conniving with the Modi government in its authoritarian and communalist actions, has indicated its dissatisfaction with the High Court ruling, but pending a full hearing of the matter rejected the BJP government’s plea for the bail order to be stayed.

On June 18, the Supreme Court termed the High Court’s criticisms of the UAPA’s definition of “terrorism” and the use to which the government has put it “surprising,” adding that the ruling “can have pan-India ramification(s).” Further elaborating on its concerns, the Supreme Court stated: “The manner in which the High Court had interpreted the Act (UAPA) will probably require examination by the Supreme Court. … [I]n the meantime, the impugned judgment shall not be treated as a precedent and may not be relied upon by any of the parties in any of the proceedings.”

Chinese government imposes a “three-child” policy

Lily Zhao

On May 31, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) politburo announced that birth restrictions would be further increased and each couple allowed to have three children.

This most recent modification of the decades-old population control policy still maintains a limit on childbirth. It is another bureaucratic and anti-democratic attempt to respond to declines in birth rates and the slowing growth of the Chinese capitalist economy.

An elderly man with children near a commercial office building in Beijing on May 10, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong]

The “three-child” announcement was not warmly welcomed, however, and it was especially unpopular among young people.

One of the most prevalent responses on social media was that the financial burden of having one child is heavy enough, let alone three. As is the case internationally, workers and young people in China are confronted with worsening living and working conditions, an ever-bleaker job market amid the pandemic, and limited access to social services, including public schools for those families migrating to large cities.

In cities where job opportunities are centered, rent itself could easily eat up half of the monthly salary of a young college graduate or more, while housing prices have been skyrocketing. For instance, the median second-hand housing price in Shenzhen, one of the major centers for foreign trade, manufacture and IT in southeast China, reached 54,110 renminbi (RMB) per square meter ($US718 per square feet) last year, while the median monthly income there is just 5,199 RMB ($US742).

That is, a small two-bedroom apartment could easily cost more than 3 million RMB, a figure greater than 40 years’ salary for someone on the median income.

Another prevalent concern, particularly among young women, is that the three-child policy will further suppress their employment opportunities. Even before the hated one-child policy was dropped in 2011, it was not uncommon for women of child-bearing age to be asked during job interviews if they have children or plan to bear a child. Many companies consider paid maternity leave as an impediment to their accumulation of profits.

Now, if a woman can potentially have three children, which could amount to at least six or seven years on and off maternity leave during her late twenties and early thirties, she will be placed in an extremely disadvantaged position in an increasingly competitive job market.

The CCP regime’s birth regulation policies are not simply an attack on women, but on the democratic rights of all workers to decide how many children they want to have. The previous one-child policy was widely resented. Workers who broke the rule were forced to pay financially crippling fines (which amounted to nothing for many party bureaucrats, wealthy elites and urban upper middle-class households), went through sterilizations and abortions against their will, and lost their jobs.

The CCP has turned towards encouraging couples to have more children, not to right the wrongs of the past or to uphold the interests of workers. On the contrary, the government’s latest stance is motivated solely by the financial and political interests of the Chinese capitalist class.

The one-child policy was implemented in 1979 as China faced a rapidly expanding population. The specifics of this policy varied by province, but in general, each urban family was restricted to one child, while rural families were allowed two. Most ethnic minorities were exempted from the restrictions.

In 2011, if both parents were only children, they were allowed to have a second child. In 2013, this “two-child” policy was expanded so that only one parent needed to be a single child. Two years later, all couples were allowed a second child.

These shifts have been an attempt to address low birth rates, population aging and the fading away of the “demographic dividend” produced by a large segment of the population having been of working-age.

China’s rapid economic growth in the decades after capitalist restoration in 1978 partly relied on the fact that working-age people were a high proportion of the population, ensuring a ready supply for the labor market and less requirements for health care and pensions.

The two-child policy failed. According to a demographic study conducted last year by the Evergrande Research Institute, China will soon approach its population peak. During 2018, the number of births fell by 2 million, followed by a further decline of 580,000 in 2019. By 2030, the annual number of births is forecast to drop by another 3.65 million.

At the same time, the population is aging disproportionately. In 2019, 12.6 percent of people were 65 years old and above. This figure will reach 14 percent in 2022, 20 percent in 2033, and an extraordinary 35 percent in 2060.

The official Xinhua news agency said the new three-child policy could “maximize the role of population in stimulating economic and social growth.” The politburo itself declared that the change was essential in “realizing a rapid and high-quality economic growth, defending national security, and maintaining social stability.”

Low birth rates and an aging population, as recognized by the CCP bureaucrats, have serious economic and social implications. The same demographic study reported that the proportion of the population that is working-age had been in decline since 2010. It was estimated that by 2050, the relative size of this cohort would decrease by another 23 percent compared to 2019. The study warned that an aging population would increase consumption and reduce savings and investment, potentially impeding economic growth.

Economic growth had been slowing years before the COVID-19 pandemic. In the June quarter of 2019, under the impact of the trade war measures implemented by the US, China’s growth rate hit its lowest point since 1992. This year, even though China recorded a sharp rebound from 2020’s pandemic impact, many concerns persist from the coronavirus crisis: unemployment, the bankruptcy of smaller enterprises, declines in the numbers of migrant workers in the cities, just to name a few.

The Beijing regime has long considered rapid economic growth as a central factor in maintaining social and political stability. Class tensions have sharpened intensified ever more in recent years, however, by staggering levels of inequality and increasingly oppressive forms of rule. Stimulating the birth rate is critical for the ruling elite to have a steady supply of cheap labor to boost output.

Underlying the low birth rate and young people’s unwillingness to have more children is a deep chasm between the tiny super-rich elite and masses of workers and young people struggling to get by. Opposition to this bureaucratic population policy cannot be separated from the fight against inequality, for decent employment and living conditions, and for democratic rights, that is, for genuine socialism.

Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years for the murder of George Floyd

Kevin Reed

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd on May 25, 2020, was sentenced on Friday to 22-and-a-half years in prison.

Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin listens as Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentences him to 22 1/2 years in prison, Friday, June 25, 2021 at the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis [Credit: Court TV via AP, Pool]

Chauvin—who was captured on smartphone video kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes until he was asphyxiated—wore a medical facemask in court and looked to his left as Hennepin County Court Judge Peter A. Cahill read out the sentence. Chauvin was immediately led out of the courtroom and back to jail after the conclusion of the procedure.

The sentence was greater than the minimum 12 and-a-half years required by the state’s guidelines for the crimes Chauvin had been convicted of on April 20. In his 22-page “Sentencing Order and Memorandum Opinion,” Judge Cahill wrote, “270 months, which amounts to an additional ten years over the presumptive 150-month sentence, is appropriate.”

The judge also wrote that Chauvin “must be held accountable for the death of Mr. Floyd and for doing so in a manner that was particularly cruel and an abuse of his authority.” While the sentence was less than the thirty years requested by the prosecution, it is the longest sentence ever handed down in a Minnesota case involving murder by a police officer.

According to legal experts, Chauvin could get out of prison on parole after serving two-thirds of his sentence or approximately 15 years. Ben Crump, attorney for the Floyd family, said the family had gotten “some measure of accountability” from the verdict but is hoping Chauvin gets the maximum sentence at his upcoming federal civil rights trial.

Ahead of the sentencing announcement, Chauvin spoke briefly saying he could not give a full formal statement due to “additional legal matters at hand” and then, turning to the Floyd family, said, “There’s going to be some other information in the future that would be of interest, and I hope things will give you some peace of mind,” although he did not explain what he meant by this comment.

Speaking outside the courtroom, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office prosecuted the case against Chauvin said, “Today’s sentencing is not justice, but it is another moment of real accountability on the road to justice.” However, the number of police murders in the US so far—431 deaths through June 21 as reported by the Washington Post—is on track to reach 1,000 people this year, the same number killed every year since 2015.

Family members of George Floyd had asked Judge Cahill prior to his announcement to impose the maximum possible sentence of 40 years for the public murder of their loved one. Floyd’s brother Rodney said the sentence was a slap on the wrist and that the family “suffered a life sentence for not having him in our life, and that hurts me to death.” Floyd’s nephew Brandon Williams, said the punishment was insufficient, “when you think about George being murdered, in cold blood with a knee on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds execution-style in broad daylight.”

The day began with Chauvin’s defense attorney Eric Nelson requesting a new trial on the grounds of jury misconduct and judicial errors. Nelson argued that public statements after the trial by juror Brandon Mitchell—who explained why the video of Floyd’s killing made the Chauvin’s conviction a clear choice—were grounds for at least a special hearing and that the judge should have granted a change of venue, among other issues. However, Cahill denied the motions and moved to the sentencing announcement in the afternoon.

The horrific video of the murder of George Floyd by Chauvin—captured and uploaded to social media on Memorial Day 2020 by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier—has been viewed online 1.4 billion times. The video of Floyd—a 46-year-old black man—pleading for his life and calling out for this mother while white police officer Chauvin remained on his neck in cold-blooded indifference, sparked a multiethnic mass movement across the US and internationally against racial discrimination and police violence involving tens of millions of people.

Since his conviction, Chauvin has been held at the maximum security prison in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, in a cell by himself for his own protection and with his meals brought to him.

In mid-March, weeks before the jury trial of Chauvin, the city of Minneapolis agreed to compensate Floyd’s family with $27 million for the wrongful death, the largest such settlement in the city’s history.

The three other officers involved in Floyd’s murder—J. Alexander Kueng, 27, Thomas Lane, 38, and Tou Thao, 35—are scheduled for trial in March on state charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter. All four officers have been charged by the US Justice Department with federal offenses, Chauvin for excessive force and violating Floyd’s civil rights, Kueng and Thao, for failing to intervene to stop Chauvin and Kueng, Lane and Thao for deliberate indifference for failing to provide medical care to Floyd.

Chauvin has also been charged in a separate federal indictment for an incident of police brutality in 2017 where he used a choke hold on a 14-year-old and beat the teenager in the head with a policemen’s flashlight.

All of these charges—along with the prosecution, conviction and now sentencing of Chauvin—are a measure of the concern within the US ruling establishment about the explosive social and political implications of the ongoing police violence against the working class and poor of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. The source of the disproportionate rate of police brutality and violence facing minority populations is to be found in the conditions of poverty and socio-economic inequality that dominate American capitalist society.

Trudeau appoints Canadian Labour Congress President Yussuff to Senate sinecure upon his retirement

Roger Jordan

Four days after Hassan Yussuff ended a seven-year stint as president of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), the country’s largest trade union federation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his appointment to the Senate. Canada’s unelected upper house of parliament is notorious as a reward and political rest home for has-beens, cronies and bagmen of Canada’s two traditional parties of government, the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Newly retired CLC President Hassan Yussuff

Yussuff’s new sinecure will provide him an annual salary of $150,000-plus till he is 75 and a lavish expense account. His appointment epitomizes the ease with which top trade union bureaucrats find their home in the right-wing political establishment and corporate boardrooms.

In the most immediate sense, Trudeau is rewarding Yussuff for his services in suppressing the class struggle and supporting the multi-billion dollar bailout of the banks and big business during the coronavirus pandemic. In March 2020, as the pandemic erupted and financial markets quaked, Yussuff declared that Canada required a “collaborative front” between the trade unions and employers. This front would soon be giving its blessing to a $650 billion state bailout of the markets and big business, so as to prop up the rich and super-rich. It then transitioned to forcing millions of people back into unsafe workplaces as the virus ran rampant.

In May 2020, Yussuff co-authored an article with Chamber of Commerce head Perrin Beatty in which the pair called for the aforementioned “collaborative front” to be made permanent in the form of a “national economic task force.” This was necessary, they argued, to ensure Canada could compete with its rivals on the world stage, and to “stop stakeholders going off in different directions,” i.e. to prevent the working class from asserting its independent interests, including prioritizing workers’ health and lives over capitalist profit. Whilst Yussuff articulated this corporatist policy most openly, it has been pursued by every trade union, from Unifor and the teachers’ unions to the Quebec Federation of Labour and Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CNTU).

Yussuff’s nearly two-decade career in the CLC leadership—prior to being elected president he served as its secretary-treasurer—embodies what the anti-worker syndicates that go by the name “unions” have become, over the past four decades: nationalist and pro-corporate entities, dedicated to upholding the interests of Canadian big business.

Pseudo-left defenders of the unions, like Fightback and the International Socialists, now try to depict Yussuff as a “bad apple.” They conveniently forget that it was the decision of the ex-Stalinist Hassan Husseini—the candidate for CLC president that they backed— to withdraw and throw his support behind Yussuff, that ensured his narrow election as CLC president in 2014. Last year, they went into a fit of apoplexy when Yussuff and the CLC released a statement supporting Bill Morneau, Trudeau’s former finance minister and corporate pension CEO, in his bid to head the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, Fightback and the other pseudo-left groups remained conspicuously silent, as they do to this day, on the unions’ role in supporting, indeed lobbying for, the bail out of corporate Canada, and their enforcing of the ruling class’ homicidal back-to-work/back-to-school policy.

The truth of the matter is that Yussuff is a typical representative of the upper echelons of the union bureaucracy. Elected as secretary treasurer of the CLC in 2002, he served for 12 years as the right-hand man to CLC President Ken Georgetti, who came to be so hated that he is the only incumbent CLC president to ever lose a bid for re-election. Yussuff defeated his former boss and close ally, amid mounting worker anger over the unions’ refusal to wage any serious opposition to the hard-right policies of the federal Harper Conservative government.

Georgetti’s period in office was characterized by the trade unions’ acquiescence to the decimation of industrial and manufacturing jobs; the New Democratic Party’s propping up of the big business and scandal-ridden Paul Martin Liberal government; and the failed CLC-backed attempt to forge a Liberal-led Liberal-NDP coalition government, during the 2008 economic crisis. The coalition agreement, which was torpedoed when the ruling elite swung behind Harper’s proroguing of parliament, to cling to power in a constitutional coup, included commitments to enforce $50 billion in corporate tax cuts and wage war in Afghanistan through 2011. When the New Democrats emerged as the official opposition in 2011, Georgetti and the CLC backed the ascension of former Quebec Liberal minister and avowed Margaret Thatcher admirer, Thomas Mulcair, to the leadership of Canada’s social democrats. The union body also backed the Ontario NDP’s support for the austerity Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne, which gutted spending on health care, education, and social services. Throughout this entire period, Yussuff was re-elected to his well-paid position at one CLC congress after another, on the same slate as Georgetti.

In spite of his fraudulent attempt to posture in 2014 as the candidate of “change,” with his slogan “More democracy, grassroots renewal,” Yussuff, during his tenure as CLC president, oversaw a further turn to the right on the part of the union bureaucracy. With the election of the big business Liberals under Trudeau in 2015, the unions further expanded their corporatist relations with government and big business.

The CLC and all its affiliates, including the purportedly “left”-led Canadian Union of Postal Workers, played a key role in Trudeau’s 2015 election, by spearheading an “Anybody but Conservative” campaign, that portrayed the Liberals as a “progressive” alternative to the Tories. Just a week after being elected prime minister, Trudeau held an unprecedented closed-door meeting with more than one hundred top leaders of the CLC and its affiliates, in which they all pledged to work closely and loyally with the incoming government. After the election of US President Donald Trump, the unions joined in the fascist-minded president’s promotion of economic protectionism and nationalism, with the only difference that their slogan was “North America First” instead of “America First.”

To put this slogan into practice, Yussuff and Unifor President Jerry Dias effectively served as Trudeau government advisers, during the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. They and the CLC subsequently hailed its outcome: a protectionist trade pact aimed at laying the basis for North America’s twin imperialist powers to wage trade war and prepare for potential military conflict with global rivals like China, the European Union, and Russia.

Yussuff termed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which includes a clause barring free trade agreements with “non-market economies, a euphemism for China, as “historic.” The CLC has also continued to describe Trudeau as “worker-friendly,” even as the Liberal government has embarked on a vast rearmament program that will see military spending rise by over 70 percent by 2026, compared to 2017 levels, and has repeatedly adopted or threatened to adopt laws criminalizing workers struggles, including the 2018 postal workers’ and 2021 Port of Montreal strikes.

The cooperation between the CLC, government and big business was taken to the next level with the outbreak of the pandemic. Yussuff’s “collaborative front” took the form of a series of backroom meetings with government ministers and business lobby groups aimed, first, at designing various emergency programs—massive bailouts for big business and makeshift relief for working people—and then at “reopening” the economy, that is forcing workers back-on-the-job amid the pandemic. One of the key slush funds for the corporate elite was the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, which is set to cost the government well over $100 billion. Sold by Yussuff and his fellow union bureaucrats as a “job saving” measure, it has been used by some of Canada’s largest corporations to boost shareholder payouts, executive salaries, and share buybacks.

To enforce the back-to-work campaign, the unions deliberately demobilized all worker opposition and refused to fight for any pandemic-related demands in contract disputes. As soon as the pandemic erupted, the teacher unions in Ontario wound up the fight against Ford’s cuts to education, which had precipitated a one-day province-wide strike in February 2020. Harvey Bischof, the head of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, responded to the suggestion that teachers might strike, to oppose what the union itself described as potentially life-threatening working conditions, by declaring the OSSTF would not sanction “illegal job action.” At the Cargill meat packing plant in High River, Alberta the United Food and Commercial Workers sent 2,000 workers back to the unsafe factory after almost 1,000 COVID-19 infections and three deaths, insisting that any job action by workers to protect their health and lives would be “illegal,” and contravene the collective bargaining system the union is duty-bound to uphold. Meanwhile, Unifor, the union where Yussuff embarked on his career as a trade union bureaucrat, helped the Detroit Three, in the fall of 2020, to impose another round of concessions on autoworkers, including the entrenchment of the multi-tier low-wage system, while failing to negotiate a single pandemic-related safety measure.

In light of this record, Yussuff’s ability to exchange the CLC president’s suite for a plush leather-upholstered chair as a Liberal government-appointee in the “Red Chamber” should come as no surprise. That being said, it does point to the extraordinary extent to which the union bureaucracy has been integrated into the structures of the capitalist state and major corporations. This is a process driven by powerful objective forces: on the one hand a growing working-class rebellion, driven by mounting social inequality and the endless assault on workers’ rights; and, on the other, the turn of the ruling elite to right-wing, anti-democratic forms of rule, as it prepares for economic and military conflicts with its rivals on the world stage, under conditions of an unprecedented global capitalist crisis. Given the nationalist and pro-capitalist outlook that is the very essence of the unions, they must inevitably respond to the growth of the class struggle and the deepening crisis of the social order upon which their privileges depend, by moving ever further to the right, becoming ever more hostile to the working class, and embracing ever more forthrightly the institutions of the capitalist state.

The integration of the union bureaucracy with the capitalist state is an international process. In the United States, President Biden is supporting union organization drives with the so-called Pro Act, which will simplify the process for union certification in economic sectors with a low or no unionized workforce. The aim of this unprecedented support from a US President for the union bureaucracy is to establish a “national labour front,” led by the secretaries of Defence, Homeland Security, and Finance, that will use the trade unions to dragoon workers behind American imperialism’s economic, diplomatic, and military offensive against China.

Germany’s largest union, IG Metall, is overseeing the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the auto and related industries, blackmailing and bullying workers to accept early retirement and other compensation programs, and drafting restructuring programs on behalf of corporate management. Underscoring that this process has been long in the making, Berthold Huber, the former head of IG Metall, celebrated his 60th birthday in 2010, in the office of Germany’s right-wing Christian Democrat Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The Merkel government has imposed rigorous austerity throughout Europe and in Germany itself, and led a revival of German militarism that has been accompanied by the trivialization of Nazi war crimes by state-backed far-right academics.