Wave of school occupations in Greece demanding safe classrooms and opposing attacks on education

Robert Stevens

A wave of school occupations has broken out in Greece to demand safe classrooms, and to protest attacks on education by the New Democracy government.

Occupations have taken place at many high schools and especially in lyceums in the most populated area of the country—Attica, which includes the capital, Athens, and other town and cities on the mainland and islands including Thessaloniki, Patras, Volos, Lamia, Chania, Heraklion and Rethymno.

Students are demanding smaller classes and an end to the 50%+1 protocol under which schools will only close classes if a there is one person more than half the class who has COVID. They insist on free and frequent rapid tests in schools for all children, and not just self-tests, and recruitment of the necessary cleaning staff. Students also demand the recruitment of more teachers.

Students hold up a protest banner outside the town hall in Petroupoli district in northwestern Athens on September 24, 2021. It reads, "50+1 sardines in boxes you are making making profits on the backs of children" (Credit: Dimitris Giannitsis/Facebook)

A central demand is for the abolition of the minimum admission system for university qualification. This was passed by the right-wing government in February and establishes a minimum entry requirement for university and a maximum graduation term. It requires students on most courses to complete their degrees within six years.

As in all countries, children have been sent back into school with hardly a mitigation measure to prevent them getting COVID. The TOC newspaper’s web site reported Wednesday that 4,026 cases, almost a third (29 percent) of all new cases recorded in Greece for the week September 20-26, were aged 4-18 years. This was an increase of 21 percent among that age group in just one week.

A statement published Saturday by the Athens Students' Coordinating Committee, which has organised many of the protests, denounced government lies that pupils would return to safe classrooms. “The first weeks of school operation have proven that the government's big words that 'schools will operate normally this year' are fairy tales.” The statement added, “You have returned us to an oppressive stressful school. We are running from school to tutorials, from tutoring to studying to make up for the huge gaps we all have.”

In the summer Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ government passed a law under which the country’s 180,000 schoolteachers can be required to hold all classes online, from pre-school nurseries to sixth forms preparing for university entrance exams. Refusal to participate can lead to teachers and pupils, many of whom do not have the necessary equipment, being victimised. This law is now being used against schoolchildren and teachers who are supporting the occupations and are being deemed absent from class.

The statement continued, “You have chosen to gamble again with life and our right to education! Get ready to face us again this year! Let's go! The government thinks it has found a new ‘trick’ to terrorize us: Running webex [the digital platform set up for remote learning] when a school is being occupied. (By the way, you didn't care about running webex so much last year when students didn't have microphones, cameras, etc., nor do they care about students getting sick with Covid now…”

The organisation has called national protest for October 11. It said in reference to the suppression by the government against a mass movement of pupils occupying school nationally a year ago to oppose unsafe classrooms, “Let us remind you that last year you brought us prosecutors, police, threw chemicals at us, arrested students and still didn't stop us.”

The statement called for “parents and teachers to fight together! Student Councils, Parents’ Associations and Associations of Teachers”.

There is widespread support for the students’ fight among teachers. At a General Assembly of the OLME teachers trade union on September 25, as the occupations were escalating, delegates voted to back the student occupations. Expressing the sympathy of rank and file- teachers, by 92 percent they ratified a proposal to strike, or abstain from tele-education, where there are already student occupations underway. By the same margin, they voted in opposition to the Ministry of Education’s stipulation that teachers be assessed for their performance.

Local OLME teacher delegates voting to support the school occupations (Credit: Panos Doulas/Facebook page “COVID-19 Solidarity”–Menoume energoi–We will stay active)

Occupations began Friday and by Tuesday had spread throughout the country. On Tuesday, ERT reported that 19 schools were occupied in Thessaloniki.

TOC reported, “In Veria [in northern Greece], the 1st 2nd and 4th Lyceum, the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Gymnasium are closed due to occupation, while for a short time the students of the Music School and the 3rd Lyceum of Veria were also occupied.”

“Many secondary schools in the Peloponnese are under occupation. Already in Tripoli… the 1st Gymnasium - Lyceum, the 2nd Gymnasium—Lyceum, the 3rd Lyceum, the 4th Lyceum and the EpAL [Vocational Lyceum] of Tripoli are under occupation.”

The website reported that “the 3rd high school of Sparta is under occupation since today, Monday 29 September.”

In Corinthia, the Gymnasium and Lyceum at three schools, Zeugolati, Vrachati and Velos were occupied.

Between Friday evening and Monday morning 24 schools were occupied in Epirus. TOC reported, “According to the data available so far, eleven schools in Arta, seven in Giannina, two in Preveza and four in Thesprotia are under occupation.” It noted that in Giannina, “The students are raising demands related to pandemic measures and issues related to school infrastructure.”

TOC also reported that in the Magnesia region of Greece, of which Volos is the capital, eight schools were occupied, “with students raising many issues, mainly about the coronavirus measures.”

In the regional unit of Phthiotis in central Greece, pupils at the 7th Gymnasium of Lamia began occupying on Tuesday morning. The presented demands including that self tests be available for all and that masks must be used. TOC reported that “they demand that the class be closed when a student becomes ill…”

Many schools on Greece’s islands were occupied, with at least seven under occupation in Corfu. In Crete, data from the Department of secondary of education confirmed that the occupation had hit 14 schools in Heraklion. The goodnet web site reported that schools occupied included, “1st, 2nd ,4th middle School, high School, Panormos, high School of the Diocese, the high school Spili, high school Anogia, —1st, 2nd, 3rd ,4th YELL county, the Experimental secondary school, Music School, the 1st and 2nd EPAL.”

The occupations to demand safe classrooms, in the middle of a pandemic in which the youngest in society are being infected on mass are part of a growing movement internationally against the homicidal policies of the ruling elite. It is significant that these demands are being made alongside ones to demand more spending on education and on the recruitment of teachers.

Asylum seekers being held in conditions akin to detention centres in UK

Barry Mason

A recently published report condemns the conditions of asylum seekers herded into temporary accommodation in Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic. It compared accommodation in hotels to detention centres.

The report was produced by academics at Napier University in Edinburgh in cooperation with Glasgow-based Migrants Organising for Rights and Empowerment (MORE). Its aims included documenting the experiences of asylum seekers in Glasgow and the impact of their relocation. It found that putting asylum seekers in temporary accommodation had increased the risk of them contracting COVID-19.

Border force officials stand up as people thought to be migrants who made the crossing from France are brought into port after being picked up in the Channel by a British border force vessel in Dover, south east England, Thursday, July 22, 2021. AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

The report’s interim findings included:

“The relocation of our participants to hotel-type accommodation during the pandemic had a negative impact on their health and wellbeing, as individuals were faced with a number of restrictions such as losing their cash payments, being unable to cook their own food, having their mobility restricted, being unable to visit friends or have visitors.

“Far from offering a ‘safe environment’ during COVID-19, our participants experienced these forms of temporary accommodation as unsafe and often as detention-like paces.

“Relocations to temporary or contingency forms of accommodation took place with little consideration of people’s needs and with no consultation with asylum seekers themselves. In some cases, individuals were even threatened with deportation by the accommodation provider’s staff if they resisted the move.”

From the start of the pandemic in March 2020 until October that year the Home Office increased its use of hotel accommodation for asylum seekers around eight-fold, from 1,200 to 9,500. The Napier university team spoke to around 50 asylum seekers in Glasgow.

The report details the intolerable situation many were forced into. It notes that a “key policy change that took place during the pandemic was the withdrawal of financial support for those asylum seekers living in hotel-type accommodation throughout the UK. While asylum seekers usually receive £39.63 per week, the financial support was stopped for those who were moved to hotels during the pandemic. This was based on the grounds that for those moving to full-board accommodation, the basic necessities such as food and toiletries would be provided so there was no need to give cash payments.” This “policy decision was widely criticised for leading to the deterioration of asylum seekers’ mental health and wellbeing, and its lawfulness was challenged in court by legal firms representing asylum seekers.”

Other asylum seekers were sent into a “Mothers and Baby Unit” in Glasgow, opened in October 2020. The report notes that “at the heat of the second wave… In January 2021, the Unit housed around 25 asylum-seeking women with babies or who were pregnant. Previously used for accommodating young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, the facility was refurbished by Mears in 2020, turning it into 37 self-contained bedsits.” It was criticised for its unsuitability and cramped conditions.

One woman, Miriam, was being sent to the Mothers and Baby Unit. As she was collecting her belongings, including some food, she was told, “You are a destitute, you an asylum seeker. You're not supposed to have all these things”. She asked a driver what would happen if she refused to go into the unit. The driver replied, “it's your right if you can refuse, you can refuse. But you should know that if you refuse [the] Home Office can also decide to deport you”.

Beginning in April last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to explode, several hundred asylum seekers in Glasgow were removed from temporary flats and put in five hotels around the city. Mostly men there were also pregnant women.

In June last year an asylum seeker, Badreddin Abadlla Adam, was shot dead by police after he stabbed six people including three fellow asylum seekers. The Sudanese man had been put in the Park Inn hotel, Glasgow. Forced to self-isolate in his room because of suspected COVID-19, his mental health quickly deteriorated. A friend explained to Sky News, “Because of bad food [at the hotel] this man [Badreddin] started to suffer from abdominal disturbances and vomit every time. The people thought he was affected by coronavirus and detained him in his room for one month which affected his mental health badly.”

Similar conditions were detailed in a Refugee Council report in April this year. It was based on interviews with around 400 asylum seekers in Hull, Leeds, London and Rotherham.

The Refugee Council said that its “staff have been extremely concerned about gaps in support for people, and have often had to step in to provide basics like shoes and coats and make sure that people receive the food they need. People’s mental and physical health has declined, and they have spoken about their feelings of isolation and abandonment.”

The council added, “Many people are lacking adequate clothing and footwear, often having arrived in the UK with just the clothes they are wearing. The Home Office does not provide clothing for people seeking asylum and the Refugee Council routinely works with people whose only footwear has been a pair of worn flip flops. Having such unsuitable footwear means people are unable to leave the hotel for exercise or to access services which are typically a fair walking distance from the hotels.”

Hotels are not the only inappropriate accommodation being used for asylum seekers. It is now a year since the former Napier barracks in Kent were first used to house asylum seekers. It was the scene of protest and a fire.

Marking the anniversary of its opening, Steve Valdez Symonds, the UK Refugee and Migrant Rights director for Amnesty International told the Evening Standard on September 21, “Over the past year, the squalid detention-like conditions at Napier Barracks have spread Covid-19, renewed or exacerbated psychological traumas and generally punished people for doing no more than exercise their right to seek asylum in the UK.

“The barracks are now a byword for the cruel injustice of the Government’s attempts to shirk responsibility for providing a fair, humane and properly-run asylum system.”

The recent influx of refugees from Afghanistan have not fared much better. Speaking before a Home Affairs Committee meeting of MPs in parliament on September 22 Matthew Rycroft, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, said 7,000 Afghan refugees were in hotel accommodation including 70 unaccompanied children. The government could not rule out them still being in hotels at Christmas, with Rycroft’s deputy, Tricia Hayes, telling MPs vaguely, “While at the minute we cannot put a date on when we are going to get people out of hotels, we all want to do it as quickly as possible.”

The use of hotels and other large facilities to accommodate asylum seekers is being used by far right and fascist forces to harass and abuse them. A Freedom of Information response by the Guardian newspaper from the UK Home Office showed 70 racist incidents at hotels and barracks housing asylum seekers in an 18-month period up to the end of July.

The Tory government is moving to make the situation for asylum seekers even more intolerable. Its Nationality and Border Bill currently going through parliament having passed two readings, includes proposals to set up offshore “accommodation and reception centres” in Africa and mainland Europe. It would also make it illegal for asylum seekers to enter the UK without prior permission. Those entering without permission, which would be the case for the majority of those coming to the UK, could face the threat of up to four years in jail followed by deportation. The United Nations refugee organisation, UNHCR, said in a September 23 statement that the proposals “would break international law.”

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.