Balkans school reopenings and low vaccination rate drive latest wave of coronavirus infections

Markus Salzmann

COVID-19 infections and deaths have returned to record-high levels in Romania, Bulgaria, and other Balkan countries following the reopening of schools.

Since the pandemic began, more than 1 million of Romania’s 19.4 million residents have contracted the virus, and 36,230 have died. Last Wednesday alone, there were 130 deaths. Between the second and third waves, that number had fallen to two on some days.

The number of new daily infections on Friday returned to the level of last December, i.e., 7,676. Officials say it could rise to 20,000 by early October. At the same time, the number of unreported cases is enormous. According to estimates by the health organization MedLife, infection figures are five to seven times higher than the officially reported numbers.

As of last Wednesday, only 32 intensive care beds were still available in the entire country, but these beds could not be used because of a lack of properly trained staff.

The reason for the dramatic increase in infections is the opening up of schools after the summer vacation, combined with the country’s low vaccination rate of just 30 percent. Even now, 40 percent of medical staff and teachers are not vaccinated. After schools were closed for extended periods last year, unrestricted face-to-face classes resumed on September 13. Now schools have become hotspots of transmission. According to the Ministry of Education’s figures, which are likely to be a significant underestimation, 3,362 students and preschoolers and 1,200 school employees have been infected.

Experts have long warned against opening up schools, predicting a rapid rise in infection and death rates. “Schools act as an accelerant for transmission in communities. It’s like driving in first gear in the community and then immediately shifting into fifth gear when children attend school,” explained health expert Razvan Chereches.

While universities are partially switching back to online lectures, all of Romania’s political parties—government and opposition—have agreed to keep schools open in the interest of the economy. In light of the possibility of new elections, all of the parties have stated that there will be no lockdown or the reimplementation of the protective measures introduced last year. Following the loss of its majority, the country’s right-wing government led by Florin Citu is expected to call for a new election.

COVID-19 infections are also rising sharply in neighbouring Bulgaria. Last week, 516 people died as a result of the disease, the highest number this year. Of the country’s 7 million inhabitants, almost half a million have become infected, 20,350 have died, and more than 4,700 people are currently in hospital, with around 400 in intensive care. The situation is extremely tense because the Bulgarian health care system was in a disastrous state even prior to the pandemic. Since then, the situation has only worsened.

Last week alone, 152 new infections were reported among medical staff. This means that 14,287 employees in this sector have now been infected. Information on how many have died is not available. In schools, the situation is similarly devastating. As with medical staff, only 30 percent of teachers have been vaccinated against COVID-19. According to the Ministry of Education, one in five teachers has already been infected with the virus.

When schools opened on September 15, just 2 percent of students had been vaccinated. The spread of the virus in schools was directly enabled by the government. Education Minister Nikolay Denkov explicitly allowed celebrations in schools when classes began, and the country’s interim government is doing nothing to increase vaccination rates. In mid-August, just 15 percent of the population had been vaccinated, and even now Bulgaria is at the bottom of the list in Europe for vaccination rates.

In November, following yet another failure to form a government, the third parliamentary election this year is expected to take place. All of the parties are united in opposing any new measures to contain the pandemic.

In Kosovo, with a population of 1.9 million, a total of 16,000 infections and 2,931 deaths have been reported, although the number of unreported cases is likely to be many times higher. The country’s clinics have been at the edge of their capacity in recent weeks. A nurse at Pristina University Hospital told Radio Free Europe it was no longer possible to care for patients with one nurse responsible for 20 people. Patients often had to be cared for by relatives, which further increased infections in the clinics.

The small country’s criminal governments have completely neglected the health care system. A paltry 3.5 percent of gross domestic product is spent on it annually, according to 2019 figures. As is the case in many other Balkan and Eastern European countries, a majority of doctors, nurses and other health professionals have long since migrated to other European countries, because local wages are not enough to survive on.

Prime Minister Albin Kurti had contested the election campaign last winter by rejecting renewed protective measures. A total of 50 children have already had to be hospitalized for a serious course of infection, even though schools were still closed. On Friday, Kosovo’s Health Minister Arben Vitia announced that schools would reopen starting September 27. The government thereby rejected a demand by the state-run National Institute of Public Health to further postpone the start of school.

In Serbia, numbers have risen to the level of the first wave. Of the nearly 7 million residents, 906,000 have been infected so far and over 8,000 have died. Again, the number of unreported cases is likely to be higher.

The WHO representative in Serbia, Marian Ivanusha, commented on the seriousness of the situation, “Every day in Serbia, as many people die as the number of passengers on a bus. If that’s not worrying, I don’t know what is.” While initially the pace of vaccination in Serbia was very high, the government has since halted all efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19. Across Europe, Serbia has the highest rate of new infections.

In Montenegro, the seven-day average reached new records in September. About 500 new infections are reported daily. Again, the country’s clinics are bursting at the seams, with only about 41 percent of the population vaccinated, and the number of severe infections is increasing.

In North Macedonia, a devastating fire disaster at an improvised COVID-19 clinic in September shed light on the dire situation in the country. In the town of Tetovo, a fire killed 14 patients and injured 12, some seriously. According to reports, an exploding oxygen tank may have started the fire. Local media reported that there had already been difficulties with the oxygen tanks and associated equipment last month.

Burning Covid-19 clinic in Tetovo, northern Macedonia (video screenshot)

The makeshift facility, assembled from containers, is one of about a dozen set up to supply clinics that are completely overloaded with coronavirus cases. Here again, less than 30 percent of the population is vaccinated.

The collapse of Germany’s Left Party

Peter Schwarz

The Left Party suffered a devastating defeat in Germany’s September 26 federal election, even though the election was marked by massive social discontent. The vote for the party of outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), plummeted and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) lost more than two million votes.

Compared to the 2017 federal election, the Left Party’s share of the vote almost halved. It lost 4.3 percentage points and only achieved a 4.9 percent score. Its number of seats shrank from 69 to 39, making it by far the smallest parliamentary group in the Bundestag, which has grown to 730 members. If it had not won three directly elected deputies—two in Berlin and one in Leipzig—it would no longer have been represented in the new Bundestag, because it failed to clear the five-percent hurdle required for proportional representation.

The vote losses are spread across all the federal states and affect all the political wings of the Left Party. They are particularly dramatic in the five eastern states, the party’s former strongholds. Here, it averaged only 9.8 percent. Only in Thuringia (11.4) and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (11.1) did it still achieve double-digit results. In Thuringia, where the Left Party has held the state premiership for seven years with Bodo Ramelow, it was only the fourth-strongest party behind the AfD (24), the Social Democrats (23.4) and the CDU (16.9).

The Left Party also lost massively in the west. In North Rhine-Westphalia, where Sahra Wagenknecht was the lead candidate, it lost 3.8 points to just 3.7 percent.

In the elections to the state parliaments in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Left Party also suffered losses, although not to the same extent as in the national elections. In Berlin, its result fell by 1.6 points to 14 percent, and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania by 3.3 points to 9.9 percent.

The collapse of the Left Party is all the more remarkable because the mood in the elections was clearly left-wing. This is shown not only by the massive vote losses of the CDU, its Bavarian sister party the CSU, and the AfD, but also by the polls on the main issues that preoccupied voters. The coronavirus pandemic, climate change and social inequality were consistently at the top of the list.

In Berlin, a referendum held alongside the elections saw 56.4 percent in favour of expropriating large private housing corporations, with only 39 percent voting against. But, although the referendum’s initiators are close to the Left Party, it did not benefit.

The reason for the Left Party’s collapse

The party leadership has no explanation for its collapse in the elections other than superficial speculation. Yet the reason for the Left Party’s fall is obvious. It is due to its right-wing, capitalist policies, which can no longer be disguised with left-wing phrases. After years of experience with its government practices, no one falls for the claim any more that it is a left alternative to the other bourgeois parties.

Already from 2002 to 2011, the alliance of SPD and Left Party that governed Berlin was the nationwide leader in cutting public sector jobs and wages, privatizing hospitals and selling off public housing to speculators. The sharp social contradictions in the capital are a result of these policies.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the Left Party supported the Grand Coalition’s “profits before lives” policy, which has already claimed 94,000 lives and is now leading to a dangerous fourth wave. Bodo Ramelow, the minister-president of Thuringia, the sole state where the Left Party leads the government, has repeatedly led the way in lifting restrictions. As a result, Thuringia has the second highest infection rate in Germany: 6.3 percent of the total population have contracted the virus so far.

The state also ranks high in the deportation of refugees. And it is a stronghold of the AfD, which is led in Thuringia by fascist Björn Höcke and is courted by the Left Party. After an alliance of AfD, CDU and FDP toppled Ramelow in 2019 and he was only returned to office thanks to public protests, he personally helped AfD nominee Michael Kaufmann to the post of vice-president of the state parliament with his own vote.

During the federal election, the right-wing character of the Left Party was visible to everyone. Its entire election campaign was geared toward offering itself as a coalition partner to the SPD and the Greens, the parties of war and welfare cuts. In the midst of the election campaign, it openly declared its support for NATO for the first time and—by abstentions and several votes in favour—supported the war mission of the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) in Afghanistan.

Shortly before the election date, it replaced its election programme with an “immediate programme” that was virtually identical with the positions of the SPD and the Greens on all issues. Many voters preferred to vote for the original instead of the copy. According to broadcaster ARD’s analysis, 590,000 Left Party voters migrated to the SPD and 470,000 to the Greens. 520,000 did not vote at all.

The Left Party is reacting to the election debacle with a further shift to the right. In addition to Ramelow, Dietmar Bartsch, the chair of the Bundestag parliamentary group and others have spoken out in favour of a more prominent role for Sahra Wagenknecht after the election. Ramelow told the newspaper Die Welt: “I always had a good relationship with Sahra Wagenknecht. I think it’s good that she’s back.”

Wagenknecht had published the book Die Selbstgerechten (The Self-Righteous) shortly before the start of the election campaign. It is a nationalist diatribe that rails against cosmopolitanism and openness to the world, promotes protectionism and a strong state, and denounces immigrants and refugees for allegedly pushing down wages, and as strike-breakers and elements alien to the German culture.

Participation in the federal government is now no longer an option for the Left Party, as the number of its MPs is not sufficient for an alliance with the SPD and the Greens. But it is pushing all the harder for government participation in the federal states. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the SPD previously governed with the CDU, it offered itself to the SPD on election night to help the Social Democrats secure a majority. In Berlin, it wants to continue the coalition with the SPD and the Greens under the right-wing Social Democrat Franziska Giffey.

The bankruptcy of the pseudo-left Marx21 and SAV

The Left Party’s collapse delivers a damning verdict on pseudo-left organizations like Marx21, Socialist Alternative (SAV) and RIO, which for many years have fueled the illusion that the Left Party could be transformed into a socialist party through pressure from within or without.

In reality, the Left Party was a bourgeois party from the beginning. Its origins go back to the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the Stalinist party of state in the former East Germany, which in 1989 supported the reunification of Germany on a capitalist basis. Its perspective at the time was summed up by the last SED prime minister and long-time honorary chairman of its immediate successor, the PDS, Hans Modrow: “In my view, the path to unity was unavoidably necessary and had to be taken with determination,” he wrote in his memoirs.

The PDS held steadfastly to this determination to defend capitalism from then on. It soon became a factor of order again in the East German municipalities and states, suppressing opposition to the disastrous social consequences of capitalist restoration.

In 2007, the PDS merged with the West German Electoral Alternative for Work and Social Justice (WASG) to form the Left Party. The WASG was a rallying point for union bureaucrats, SPD functionaries and pseudo-lefts who feared that the SPD and the unions would lose their control over the working class after the Schröder government’s Agenda 2010 introduced massive attacks on welfare and workers’ rights.

The leaders of the new party were PDS founder Gregor Gysi and Oskar Lafontaine, who had 40 years of experience in the highest SPD positions and state offices. Among other things, he had been mayor of Saarbrücken, minister-president of Saarland, state and federal SPD chairman, SPD candidate for chancellor and federal finance minister under Schröder.

While the old SED cadres in the Left Party made little effort to disguise their right-wing and conservative character, several pseudo-left tendencies made an effort to present it as a left-wing, socialist party.

In the 1990s, Jakob Moneta, Winfried Wolf and other leading representatives of Ernest Mandel’s Pabloite United Secretariat joined the PDS, where they quickly rose to the executive committee or became members of the Bundestag. With the founding of the Left Party they were followed by Marx21 and SAV, whose international roots go back to the “state capitalist” tendency founded by Tony Cliff and the Militant Tendency founded by Ted Grant. Previously they had both moved in the periphery of the SPD.

These pseudo-lefts play a leading role in the party. Janine Wissler, who was a member of Marx21 and its predecessor organisations for 20 years, is co-chair of the Left Party and led it in the election campaign together with Dietmar Bartsch as the top candidate. She has defended the party’s orientation towards government participation and its approval of NATO in numerous talk-show appearances, election campaign speeches and interviews.

The pseudo-lefts have not moved the Left Party to the left, as they promised, they have gone to the right with it. The reason for this is the class character of these tendencies. They do not represent the interests of the working class, but the affluent middle class—academics, trade union and party officials, etc.—who defend the existing social order in order to preserve their privileges.

What attracted them to the Left Party was not its hollow social phrases, but its defence of the bourgeois order and the tens of millions that flow into party coffers each year through parliamentary salaries, campaign expense reimbursements and grants by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.

The pseudo-left’s turn to the right is an international phenomenon. In Greece, Syriza was elected as the governing party in 2015 on a wave of opposition to EU austerity dictates and then implemented a brutal austerity programme. In Spain, Podemos, as a part of the government, supports ruthless sanctions policies, the criminalization of Catalan separatists, and brutal social attacks. In the US, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) operate as a left-wing fig leaf for the Biden administration.

It is therefore consistent that the pseudo-lefts continue to cling to the lie that the Left Party can be transformed into a socialist party. Marx21 has published a long statement “The Left Party: What to do after the election debacle,” which blames “left-blinking Social Democrats and Greens,” the “reformer camp” of the Left Party, Sahra Wagenknecht and many others for the election defeat and calls for a “new start” for the Left in the opposition.

The votes for the SPD and the Greens were “linked to the hope for progressive social and ecological policies,” Marx21 claims. “If they don’t deliver, it will soon become clear that there is still an urgent need for a strong left.” An urgent need to suppress opposition to the government, it should correctly read. Janine Wissler, the very own product of Marx21, is not mentioned in the statement once. You can’t cover your own tracks in a more cowardly fashion than that.

The perspective of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei

The SGP, unlike the pseudo-left, has always insisted that a socialist movement can only be built in irreconcilable political struggle against the Left Party and the entire social democratic and trade union milieu to which it belongs.

As early as March 2, 1990, when a party congress of the PDS—then still in the GDR—adopted a social democratic programme that rejected class struggle and supported capitalist ownership, we wrote in Neue Arbeiterpresse: “The working class must break with Stalinism in its new form just as decisively as with the Stalinism of [former SED-leaders] Honecker and Krenz. The PDS does not represent their interests, but those of a privileged layer of bureaucrats who now want to make a career in capitalism.”

Since then, we have published hundreds of articles and statements explaining why the struggle for socialism is only possible against Die Linke and requires a break with it. Its fall is therefore to be welcomed. It is the consequence of a sharp class polarisation. Millions of Corona deaths, an unprecedented gap between rich and poor, and the return to militarism, rearmament and war are putting fierce class struggles on the agenda around the world.

The ruling classes are responding by closing ranks, moving further to the right, arming the state apparatus and strengthening fascist forces. This is also true of the Left Party.

The working class is moving in the opposite direction. Signs of resistance are multiplying around the world—strikes against low wages, intolerable working conditions and lay-offs, protests against herd immunity policies in the pandemic, demonstrations against high rents and global warming.

Large majority of Berlin voters back expropriation of German property companies

Markus Salzmann

A clear majority of voters in the German capital of Berlin has expressed support for the expropriation of major German property companies. In a referendum on Sunday, 56.4 percent voted in favor, and only 39 percent against. The referendum took place on the same day as the federal election and the state election to the Berlin House of Representatives.

A total of 1,034,709 eligible voters voted yes. The required quorum of 25 percent was achieved well before all votes were counted. The vote in the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg was particularly decisive. There, 72 percent voted yes. Likewise, 64 percent in the Mitte district and almost 61 percent in Neukölln and Lichtenberg each voted for expropriation. In almost all districts there was a majority in favor of expropriating rental sharks. Only in Steglitz-Zehlendorf and Reinickendorf did the no vote win by a narrow margin.

This clear vote in favor of the expropriation of the large landlords is to be welcomed. It is an expression of the widespread opposition to the intolerable rents in Berlin and other large cities. Rents in the capital have doubled over the past 10 years, and the price of undeveloped land has increased eightfold. Especially in districts like Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg or Mitte, the displacement of people who can no longer afford the horrendous rents occurs on a daily basis. At the same time, corporations like Deutsche Wohnen, Vonovia or Akelius are reaping vast profits.

The signatures collected in the run-up to the referendum showed, even before the votes were cast, how widespread the anger is over the unrestrained enrichment of the rental sharks. In a short time, over 360,000 signatures were collected, far more than the 175,000 necessary for the referendum to be held.

The referendum demands the expropriation of all private housing companies with more than 3,000 apartments, with the exception of cooperatives. According to the referendum’s initiators, the measure affects 240,000 of the 1.5 million rental apartments in the capital. “Compensation well below market value” should be paid out, which is legally permissible. The initiators estimated a sum of €7.3 billion to €13.7 billion would be required to cover these costs.

While the majority of voters voted in favor of expropriation, the Social Democrats and the Greens, who emerged victorious from the election for the House of Representatives, made it unmistakably clear on election night that they would continue to represent the interests of the property sharks.

Franziska Giffey (SPD), who is expected to become the new mayor, spoke out very sharply against the referendum during the election campaign. In her opinion, expropriations do not contribute to the construction of the new housing that is needed. One day before the election, she said, “I don’t want to live in a city that sends the signal that we expropriate here.”

She reaffirmed this position on the Monday after the election. Knowing full well that the referendum does not have a specific bill as its subject matter and is therefore not legally binding for the Berlin State Senate, Giffey left no doubt that it will not be implemented under her leadership. On Monday, she only said that the feasibility of the referendum would be examined on the basis of a draft law. “If that’s not constitutional, we can’t do it either,” she added.

The top candidate of the Greens, Bettina Jarasch, whose party will in all likelihood form another coalition with the SPD in Berlin, made a similar statement. She wants to “take the result of the referendum seriously,” but there are still “many legal and practical questions to be clarified.”

In the summer, Jarasch announced that she would vote yes, but that the referendum was simply a means of exerting pressure on the housing corporations to voluntarily expand the residential sector geared to the common good. “The expropriation card is only played if a cooperative solution fails,” she said at the time.

Since then, she has come under massive pressure from the leadership of the Greens and has retreated accordingly. As an “alternative,” she proposed a voluntary pact between politicians and landlords for new buildings and fair rents, under the catchphrase “rental protection umbrella.” “It’s in the hands of the housing companies,” said Jarasch.

That is hard to beat in terms of cynicism and contempt for the will of the electorate. According to the will of the Greens, those responsible for the misery that has plundered the population for 30 years should continue to determine housing policy and “voluntarily” provide affordable housing. In 2004, the SPD and Left Party gifted tens of thousands of apartments to private real estate groups at bargain basement prices. Since then, they have done nothing to curb the steadily rising rents.

On the Friday before the referendum, the property giant Vonovia succeeded in taking over Deutsche Wohnen, which has 110,000 apartments in the capital, at the third time of asking. Despite the overwhelming vote in favor of expropriation, Vonovia’s shares rose by over 4 percent on Monday, making them the biggest winner on the German DAX stock exchange. On Sunday, the Swedish real estate giant Heimstaden announced that it had acquired around 14,000 apartments in the capital.

This clearly shows that the boardrooms of the real estate companies rely on the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party, who are expected to continue to govern in Berlin. The previous red-red-green Senate has worked closely with the real estate sharks. The governing mayor, Michael Müller (SPD), and the Senator responsible for housing, Sebastian Scheel (Left Party), supported the merger plans of the two real estate groups and emphasized the good cooperation with them.

Vonovia boss Rolf Buch made it clear that he wants to continue this close cooperation against the tenants once Giffey heads the Senate. “Vonovia is ready to take on the challenges on the Berlin housing market with a new state government and the relevant social actors in the city,” he said.

Expropriations would not solve the problems on the Berlin housing market, said this head of a housing company that distributed more than €350 million to shareholders in 2019. That was €2,100 per apartment, which flowed directly from the pockets of the tenants into the shareholders’ bank accounts.

The referendum on Sunday was preceded by several demonstrations against insane rents, some of which drew tens of thousands of participants. At the same time, there are more and more strikes and protests against low wages, mass layoffs and precarious working conditions. In Berlin, nurses from the state-owned Charité and Vivantes clinics have been on strike for three weeks, demanding more staff and reasonable wages.

Like the fight for higher wages and better working conditions, the fight against intolerable rents can only be successfully waged against the SPD, the Greens, the Left Party and the other established parties.

Sunday’s referendum is a first step, but it is nowhere near enough. Even the realization of the referendum’s demands would not solve the pressing problems, but at best alleviate them somewhat. This is due to the fact that the initiators themselves come largely from the ranks or surroundings of the Left Party and trade unions. Their whole strategy is geared towards getting the Senate to change course, which is obviously not possible.

COVID-19 cases surge among school children in Spain

Santiago Guillen

Two weeks after all schools in Spain reopened after the summer break, COVID-19 is clearly infecting growing numbers of children. Children have the highest incidence rates of the virus, due to the reopening of schools by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, and the fact that this age group is still unvaccinated.

Incidence rates in the past two weeks among children below 11 years of age stands at 113 per 100,000. Those under 11 years are followed by the 30–39-year bracket (70.12 per 100,000); 40-49 (64.61); over 80 (63.83); 20-29 (63.12); 12-19 (57.11); between 60 and 69 (49.69); between 50 and 59 (49.46); and between 70 and 79 (48.64).

Data on contagion in schools and the numbers of schools and classes closed or in quarantine are scant. Spain’s regional governments, who are in charge of public education, are scarcely disclosing information. In the north-western region of Galicia, educational centers reported 364 active cases, more than double the number of active COVID-19 cases a year ago (161).

Catalonia has gone from having 836 infected students on September 12, the day schools reopened, to 2,439 two weeks later. The number of classrooms closed due to infections are also growing. In the first week after schools reopened, there were 127 quarantined classrooms. According to the Confederation of Teaching Trade Unions, there were over 1,000 classrooms quarantined in the last three weeks of September.

In Catalonia, schools recorded 246 quarantined groups yesterday, 26 more than the previous week. There are 7,176 people from the educational community in quarantine, 690 more than in the previous count: 6,871 students, 293 educators and 12 external workers.

Valencia authorities confined 64 classrooms at 44 educational centers in the fourth week of September.

The surge in cases is the result of a deliberate policy implemented by the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government in collaboration with the Workers Commissions (CCOO) and General Union of Workers (UGT) trade unions. The aim is to ensure that schools remain open, so parents can continue to work and pump out profits for the ruling class.

This policy is supported by the entire ruling establishment—including right-wing Popular Party (PP), Catalan and Basque nationalist or Podemos-backed PSOE regional governments—along with the corporate media, which is barely covering the spread of the virus among children.

The rise in cases was entirely predictable. Spain reopened most of its schools in the second week of September, a month after the US and UK. There, cases surged among kids after schools reopened.

In Scotland, schools reopened on August 16 after the summer break. Two weeks later, as the WSWS reported on August 30, 34 percent of cases were under 19 years old. Public Health Scotland reported a threefold rise in case rates for 16-17-year-olds since August 8, and a fivefold rise for 18-19-year-olds—compared to the national average, which doubled. Test positivity rates for children aged 2-17 stood at nearly 20 percent.

In the US, on August 29, roughly two weeks after some states had reopened schools, the WSWS reported that there were 180,000 child COVID-19 cases in the week ending August 19, a 50 percent increase in just one week. The prior week had seen 120,000 child cases.

All this information was readily available. The PSOE-Podemos government, however, decided to ignore the scientific evidence and reopen schools in pursuit of its “herd immunity” policy of prioritizing profits over human lives, which has already claimed 100,000 lives and infected 10 percent of Spain’s population.

Fernando Simón, director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies, is making clear that the government has no intention of eliminating the virus. Last week, Simón said, “If the objective is to completely eliminate transmission, let’s forget it, it is impossible.” Earlier, he called on the Spanish population “to normalize the situation” and denounced social distancing measures like lockdowns as an overreaction, comparing it to “shooting a fly with a bazooka.”

Mass opposition, however, is mounting throughout Europe, the US and internationally to the homicidal policy of school reopenings, which has found powerful expression in the school strike set to take place in the UK and other countries this Friday, October 1.

The call was initiated by British parent Lisa Diaz statement via Twitter calling for a nationwide school strike in the UK on October 1. Nearly 60,000 British children have been infected with COVID-19 in just the first two weeks of school reopenings. Diaz has been supported by parents and educators in the UK, the US and internationally.

The anger of teachers, students, parents and the rest of the working class must find expression in the formation of rank-and-file committees, leading opposition to the policies of the PSOE-Podemos government and fighting for a policy of eliminating and eradicating of COVID-19.

Such an opposition can only be carried out against the CCOO and UGT trade unions. The unions, along with the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and pro-Podemos organizations such as the Students in Movement or the Student Union, make up the State Platform for Public Education (Plataforma Estatal por la Escuela Pública—PEEP). PEEP has become a key accomplice of the herd immunity strategy.

In a September 2 statement, it declared: “The educational community, as it did last year, continues to demand the safe return of students at all stages of education.” It also noted that education authorities had eliminated social distancing measures, making education patently unsafe. CCOO released a token statement in late August stating that “it is unacceptable that, in the midst of a pandemic, the course begins without sufficient safety measures and with 5,000 fewer teachers than last year.”

All the PEEP organizations defend the return to class though they themselves recognize that it is not safe. They have not organized any significant national action to oppose the return to work.

As for the CGT (a minority union claiming to be an alternative to the CCOO and UGT), and for the pro-Podemos Student Union and Students in Movement, they have not even bothered to comment on the pandemic and the return to schools.

This indifference for human lives is equally shared by pseudo-left organizations such as the Morenoist Revolutionary Current of Workers (CRT).

The CRT’s Izquierda Diario website, in a September 15 article on the new school year, claims the main issue facing public education is the budget. It mentions the pandemic only to state: “The isolation protocol for students in the event of COVID or contact [with someone infected] has also been modified, and only students who are not vaccinated will be confined, which may imply a violation of their rights. Furthermore, as the CGT points out, ‘without clear guidelines and without increasing the budget, they intend to create a new hybrid class system (face-to-face / virtual).”

The lack of budget and safety are important problems issues facing public education internationally. But CRT ignores the elephant in the room: the fact that even if there were sufficient masks, social distancing, and other policies in schools, this would still not entirely halt the transmission of a deadly virus that has already claimed over 15 million lives worldwide. The CRT’s only concern is to ensure that anger in the working class and parents does not escape the confines of the union bureaucracies.

US Congress faced with deadline to prevent federal shutdown

Patrick Martin

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer moved Wednesday to push through a continuing resolution to avert a shutdown of the federal government at midnight Thursday. In a bid to obtain Republican support in the House and Senate, the Democrats agreed to separate the question of spending authorization from a measure to raise the federal debt ceiling.

Senate Republicans blocked passage of a bill Monday that combined the temporary spending authorization with the lifting of the debt ceiling, carrying out a filibuster that Democrats failed to break. The vote to invoke cloture and end debate failed by 48-50. A cloture motion requires 60 votes and, in a Senate divided 50-50 between the two capitalist parties, requires bipartisan support.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., walks to the chamber for a vote, joined at left by actor Woody Harrelson, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

While the new version of the continuing resolution drops the issue of the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in a letter to Congress Tuesday that the Treasury will exhaust by October 18 the various expedients it has been using to keep the federal debt below the ceiling of $21 trillion. At that point, the federal government will have to hold back payments for which it no longer has borrowing authority, including Social Security checks due to be sent out October 20.

The US government has never defaulted on its debt or social benefit payments, and even the prospect that it may do so in three weeks’ time has begun to affect the financial markets.

The current 2021 fiscal year ends on September 30, and without new spending authorization, most federal agencies, except the vast military-intelligence apparatus, would be required to shut down or operate with only a skeleton crew. The legislation to be introduced Wednesday night or Thursday morning in the Senate would allow agencies to spend at current levels until December 3, giving Congress two additional months to complete work on budget authorization for Fiscal Year 2022.

On Wednesday afternoon, Senate leaders in both parties said that the continuing resolution would not be approved until Thursday, only hours before the deadline, because of insistence by several Republican senators on including specific provisions in the bill, including US military aid to Israel and tighter screening of Afghan refugees brought to the United States after the collapse of the US-backed regime in Kabul last month. Negotiations were continuing into the evening Wednesday, however.

Passage of the resolution requires unanimous consent to suspend normal Senate rules, so any one senator can torpedo it. Only Republicans, however, are availing themselves of this leverage.

Schumer’s introduction of a new continuing resolution stripped of the debt ceiling increase represents yet another Democratic capitulation to a Republican filibuster. This is in keeping with the policy enforced by Biden since the beginning of the year, in the name of seeking bipartisan collaboration with “our Republican colleagues,” who backed Trump’s baseless claims of a stolen election and blocked any investigation into the storming of Capitol January 6 by fascist Trump supporters.

Biden opposes any overturning of the filibuster, a longstanding anti-democratic procedure which requires 60 votes to take any legislative action in the Senate. This has become an all-purpose pretext for abandoning his election promises: a voting rights bill, legalization of DACA recipients and other undocumented immigrants, and cosmetic measures against police violence have all failed to get the necessary 10 Republican senators.

The September 30 deadline for the continuing resolution and the October 18 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are among several such deadlines facing Congress. In each instance, the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership face intransigent opposition from congressional Republicans and from right-wing factions within the Democratic Party itself, and in each case, their response has been to grovel and conciliate.

In the case of the debt ceiling, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who repeatedly backed increases in the debt limit when Republican Donald Trump was president, said he would not do so with Democrat Joe Biden in the White House and the Democrats in control of Congress.

Schumer called on Republicans to allow passage of an increase in the debt ceiling by unanimous consent, with all the Democrats voting for it and all the Republicans abstaining, but this could be blocked by any one Republican voicing an objection, so it is highly unlikely. The Democratic leadership has been counting of pressure from the financial markets, particularly the major banks and hedge funds, to force the Republicans to give way on the debt ceiling, but so far this strategy has been a failure.

McConnell said that the Democrats could incorporate a rise in the debt limit into the social spending legislation they are planning to pass under a filibuster-proof procedure known as budget reconciliation. However, the budget resolution which permits passage of the reconciliation bill, passed by the House and Senate in August, did not include a provision for raising the debt ceiling.

Schumer said that there was not sufficient time to revise the budget resolution and then enact a reconciliation bill before the October 18 deadline. As a practical matter, this may be true, but the real problem for the Democrats is that a right-wing faction within their own party, in both the Senate and the House, objects to the $3.5 trillion price tag and wants to cut it in half, if not scuttle the reconciliation bill altogether.

The Democrats do not want to incorporate the debt ceiling increase into the reconciliation bill because it is not at all clear that the reconciliation bill will actually pass the Senate, since that would require the support of all 50 Democrats plus the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Two right-wing Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have so far refused to support the bill, while declining to publicly declare their objections. Manchin has indicated general opposition to the $3.5 trillion price tag, without specifying a counter-proposal. Sinema is reported to oppose any tax increase on the wealthy, the principal mechanism through which the social spending in the reconciliation bill is to be financed. Both Manchin and Sinema have made repeated trips to the White House in recent days for talks with Biden and other administration officials.

The stalemate over the reconciliation bill is holding up House passage of the infrastructure bill passed last month by the Senate by a bipartisan majority, including 19 Republicans, among them McConnell. As part of a deal with a right-wing (aka “moderate”) faction of House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had promised a House vote on Monday that would send the legislation to the White House for Biden’s signature, but she had to reschedule the vote to Thursday after half the members of the House Progressive Caucus said they would vote against the bill unless there was Senate action to advance the reconciliation bill.

The vote on the infrastructure bill was rescheduled for Thursday, but there were reports that it could again be postponed. Any delay, however, would result in the shutdown of federally financed construction projects all over the country, since the legislation includes a budget extension for the Department of Transportation, which was separated out from the continuing resolution for the rest of the federal government.

While both capitalist parties portray the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package as a vast effort at social reform—the Republicans screaming about socialism, the Democrats claiming another “New Deal”—the scale of the bill is drastically overstated. Spread out over ten years, the social spending package is less than half the gargantuan sums earmarked for the Pentagon, which at the present level of spending would amount to nearly $8 trillion.

The bill does not create any new social programs, but extends certain federal benefits, such as the child tax credit, to more families and makes it permanent, rather than rolled over year after year. Medicare would add dental, vision and hearing benefits, although these would be phased in over many years. Medicaid eligibility would be expanded and Head Start broadened to become a universal pre-K program for three- and four-year-olds. Other funds will pass directly into the hands of private businesses or local institutions—community colleges, child care centers, and companies providing home health care for seniors and weatherization for homes.

Given the ten-year scope and the phased-in character of the benefit increases, when the Democratic Party loses control of Congress, which could take place as soon as next year, a Republican majority could repeal the social benefits and any tax increases on corporations and the wealthy immediately.

Public anger over cover-up of Pike River mine disaster

Tom Peters

There is widespread anger at the New Zealand government’s decision to seal Pike River coal mine, ending the manned underground investigation into the 2010 disaster that claimed 29 lives. The Pike River Recovery Agency is currently working on a permanent concrete seal at the mine entrance.

The Labour Party-led government, including its then-coalition partner NZ First and the Greens, promised before and after the 2017 election to re-enter the mine to look for bodies and examine physical evidence. Its stated aim was to prosecute those in Pike River Coal’s management responsible for the appalling lack of safety in the mine, which led to the series of underground explosions. More than a decade later, no one has been held accountable for this preventable tragedy.

Family members and supporters protest on July 9, 2021, on the road to the Pike River mine. (Credit: Kath Monk)

The majority of the victims’ families opposed the decision to seal the mine without exploring the mine workings to establish the precise cause of the explosions. Their wishes, supported by international mining experts and thousands of ordinary people, have been disregarded.

Every party in parliament supports this cover-up, as does the trade union bureaucracy. The corporate media is complicit; it has completely blacked out the broad opposition in the working class to the government’s actions.

Malcolm Campbell, whose son, also named Malcolm, died at Pike River, responded in the Facebook group Uncensored Pike to the September 18 WSWS article reporting on the sealing of the mine:

“Now we have come to the end of our fight for justice and recovery of our loved ones killed doing their jobs for these incompetent so-called mine managers and corrupt government.” He asked how the dangerous mine got approved and was allowed to operate.

“So sad for all the families it has come down to our loved ones [remaining in this] hellhole, they deserved better,” Campbell said. “We as a family thank all our family and friends here and around the world for their everlasting support and kind words over these difficult years, so sorry we couldn’t get Malky home, thinking of you all xx.”

In the Facebook group Underground Miners, which includes thousands of mineworkers from around the world, the WSWS’s article received more than 200 reactions and 50 comments, almost all denouncing the NZ government.

Troy Reynolds wrote: “Very disappointing for the families and yes it feels a little like a cover up. Even if there is no fault to be had I am sure there are some poor mums and dads who will now go to their grave without closure.”

Jamie Harris commented: “The government should give the families some closure over this. They want to know. They also want other companies to learn from this, so others don’t have to go through it. No family should have to go through waiting for their loved ones to come home from work.”

In the Uncensored Pike group, Karyn Stewart was one of hundreds of people who commented, opposing the sealing. She questioned the role of Andrew Little, minister responsible for Pike River re-entry, who was leader of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union (EPMU) when the mine exploded.

“Isn’t this a conflict of interest?” Karyn asked. “How can Little front the recovery when he was a part of the union that allowed the health and safety violations?” She added: “The issues with Pike have been beset with corruption from beginning to end and one of the problems seems to be that the mainstream media are silent (have been silenced) over publishing anything.”

The union took no industrial action that could have prevented the disaster and made no public criticism of the life-threatening conditions in the mine. Little’s immediate response following the first explosion was to defend the company’s safety record.

Marc Thomlinson, who worked at Pike River mine, wrote a statement on Little’s Facebook page on September 23, highlighting that Little was aware of Pike River’s violations in 2009:

“I remember the first time I met you Andrew. I was a union delegate at an EPMU meeting held in Reefton, 2009. [...] You shook my hand at the conclusion of the meeting where we both shared a concern with the Pike River Mine in regards to the [inadequate] ventilation and secondary egress.” In violation of the law, government regulators allowed Pike River to operate with no proper emergency exit.

Thomlinson said to Little: “You looked me in the eye and affirmed to me that you were aware of the situation.” He urged the minister to “bring our men home to where they belong, because it is the right thing to do.”

The World Socialist Web Site has also received a statement supporting the Pike River families from Professor Maan Alkaisi, whose wife, Dr Maysoon Abbas, was one of 115 people who died in the collapse of the CTV building in the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

In late 2017 Brendan Horsley, then deputy solicitor-general, advised police not to lay any charges against those responsible for the building’s design, despite a mountain of evidence that it violated numerous laws and regulations and was essentially a death trap.

“After more than ten years the victims of the CTV building collapse are still waiting for accountability and justice,” Alkaisi said. “We have been let down by the very people who are supposed to protect us and apply the rules of law. The similarities of the CTV case with Pike River tragedy [show] that our legal system is dysfunctional when it comes to ensuring justice for victims.

“This is demonstrated by the delay in starting the investigation, by ignoring significant evidence, relying on irrelevant matters, the decision not to prosecute anyone for the loss of lives, the silence of government and legal officials, the lack of accountability when it comes to influential, well-connected wealthy culprits, and not answering our legitimate questions.”

He believed Crown Law, the state’s solicitors, “avoid going through cases of national or even international significance” because they are part of an “old boys’ club” and are “incompetent and scared” of facing lawyers hired by the wealthy.

On February 23, 2021, the day after the tenth anniversary of the Christchurch earthquake, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in parliament that New Zealand would continue to “stand with” the victims.

However, Alkaisi said that the day before, “when I asked our PM to meet to explain to her in private our concerns regarding the decision not to prosecute, and victims’ mistreatment, she refused to meet with me. How do you expect us to trust the politicians? How do you expect us to trust the decision Crown Law made not to prosecute was the right decision? Why were decisions made behind closed doors and without documentation? Why not conduct a just trial in front of a Judge and Jury?

“Our government has both a legal and moral responsibility to uphold our justice system to ensure it protects all citizens, and to ensure in situations where lives were lost, that those responsible will be held accountable in accordance with the rule of law. That is justice.

“The CTV collapse and Pike River tragedies will only end, when those responsible are held to account, when there is proper closure for victims and when justice is done.”

The Human Costs of iPhones

Mike Ferner

Like many of you, I use an iPhone. It is a technological wonder and allows me to do things unimaginable even a few years ago; it has more computer power than NASA had to put men on the Moon in the late 1960s-early 1970s. These phones are designed by Apple, Inc.

Yet, how many of us users ever ask what are the conditions under which these iPhones are produced?  What are these conditions doing to China’s workers, who assemble such wonderful instruments?

These are questions rarely asked in a world where the “free market” reigns.  Actually, the free market is an ideological construct, where basic questions about the impact on workers or upon the environment are precluded by definition:  the whole game is to focus concentration on consumption.  In other words, as long as you have the money (or access to credit), you can get whatever your heart desires, and issues of size, style, color, texture, etc., prevail. But just don’t ask about the workers, or the environment.

Until now, the fate of the workers (and the environment) in the production of the iPhone has been ignored.  However, with Dying for an iPhone:  Apple, Foxconn, and the Lives of China’s Workers, those days are over:  Jenny Chan, Mark Selden and Pun Ngai examine in great detail the lives of workers of a company called Foxconn, the company that produces the overwhelmingly large number of Apple’s products.  (Foxconn also produce for other American companies, such as Amazon, Microsoft, and others, but the overwhelming focus in this book concerns production for Apple.)

Because Foxconn is based in Taiwan, with much production in China that is produced for consumers in the United States, this is a global study of labor discipline, and we need to keep that perspective in mind.  But it’s strength is the detailed examination of production within China.

Motivating this study was a number of suicides by Foxconn workers during early 2010:  workers were killing themselves to spare themselves further misery of working in these factories.  The authors begin the book with a statement from a Chinese worker’s blog:

To die is the only way to testify that we ever lived.  Perhaps for the Foxconn employees and employees like us, the use of death is to testify that we were ever alive at all, and that while we lived, we had only despair.

These workers were largely migrants from rural parts of China, seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones.  Their paths took them into Foxconn’s factories.  Not all survived, but factory life took a toll on all of them.

Foxconn’s parent company was started in 1974 and has become a corporate behemoth.

Within four decades, Foxconn would move evolve from a small processing factory to become the world leader in high-end electronics manufacturing with plants extending throughout China and, subsequently, throughout the world.  Foxconn has more than two hundred subsidiaries and branch offices in Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

Foxconn is the world’s largest industrial employer, with over 1 million workers, mostly based in China.  This book focuses on working conditions in China:  “Foxconn’s largest customer by far is Apple,” and “Apple’s success is intimately bound up with the production of quality products at high speed.”

With this understanding and beginning in the summer of 20l10, researchers from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong began undercover research in Foxconn’s major manufacturing plants in nine different Chinese cities.

Theirs's is a sophisticated study, not only looking at different plants in China but in recognizing the differences—and lower wages—for workers in the interior from those working in coastal regions.  Accordingly, these looks at the developmental processes by the Chinese government as it seeks to improve the lives of Chinese people throughout the country.

Accordingly, this book looks at the intersection of Apple’s products, Foxconn’s production facilities, and Chinese development policies—and how, together, they affect Chinese workers, especially in Foxconn’s factories.

The authors do not see workers as passive victims; they seem them as active subjects trying to maintain their personal dignity, their unity, and their sanity while working under extremely demanding conditions.  Obviously, not all survive.  Yet these workers often seek opportunities to engage in collective efforts, and strikes are not unheard of.  One example provided was a strike during 2011:  workers struck in one plant when Foxconn was under pressure to produce a new model of the iPad.  Within 10 minutes after workers walked off the job in one action, senior management was down on the shopfloor talking with the workers about their demands after previously refusing

Yet the typical response is quick:

In massive strikes, either the employer or government officials require workers to elect representatives, generally limited to five, to engage in talks.  Once worker representatives are elected, the company moves to take control.  Their intervention typically marks the beginning of the fragmentation, co-optation, and crushing of worker power.  Frequently, the worker representatives are identified as troublemakers and dismissed.

Yet the workers also learn.  When this strike took place, instead of sending up a few representatives, the workers’ cried, “We are all leaders,” and refused to back down.  It was interesting to see the Chinese workers provide an answer to management that was the same used by Wobblies in the US in the early 1900s!

There are also environmental problems affecting workers’ lives.  For example, the shiny aluminum MacBook cases need to be grinded down, putting aluminum dust in the air, harming workers’ respiratory systems.  There are also chemicals used in production that are discharged into the environment, and toxic wastes are often untreated before discharging.

In short, this is not just about China, Taiwan, or the United States:  it is a very sophisticated study of the development of capitalism—whose key is control of labor—in modern electronics factories around the world.  There is much to learn from it.

This is the latest in a growing literature on China and Chinese workers under the Chinese Communist Party.  It shows there are major inequities still remaining, and like said above, much of it is based on labor being controlled.  This book is a major contribution to understanding the situations of Chinese workers and it is extremely well done.  I give it my highest accolade:  I wish I had done this study.

Yet, following, there are two things I think the growing globalization from below literature shows:  Chinese workers need to be able to extend their organization not only within particular regions, but across regions of the countries; they must learn from others’ experiences as how to do this.  Yet I doubt they can solve their problems alone.  At the same time, American and other workers around the world, and especially those within unions, need to develop links to these Chinese workers’ organizations as they develop, and build on-going and practical solidarity with these workers:  my thinking is that seafaring, longshore, and transportation workers in particular need to further organize among themselves, and be prepared to support Chinese workers’ efforts.