US is Becoming a ‘Developing Country’ on Global Rankings That Measure Democracy, Inequality

Kathleen Frydl

The United States may regard itself as a “leader of the free world,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list.

In its global rankings, the United Nations Office of Sustainable Development dropped the U.S. to 41st worldwide, down from its previous ranking of 32nd. Under this methodology – an expansive model of 17 categories, or “goals,” many of them focused on the environment and equity – the U.S. ranks between Cuba and Bulgaria. Both are widely regarded as developing countries.

The U.S. is also now considered a “flawed democracy,” according to The Economist’s democracy index.

As a political historian who studies U.S. institutional development, I recognize these dismal ratings as the inevitable result of two problems. Racism has cheated many Americans out of the health care, education, economic security and environment they deserve. At the same time, as threats to democracy become more serious, a devotion to “American exceptionalism” keeps the country from candid appraisals and course corrections.

‘The other America’

The Office of Sustainable Development’s rankings differ from more traditional development measures in that they are more focused on the experiences of ordinary people, including their ability to enjoy clean air and water, than the creation of wealth.

So while the gigantic size of the American economy counts in its scoring, so too does unequal access to the wealth it produces. When judged by accepted measures like the Gini coefficient, income inequality in the U.S. has risen markedly over the past 30 years. By the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s measurement, the U.S. has the biggest wealth gap among G-7 nations.

These results reflect structural disparities in the United States, which are most pronounced for African Americans. Such differences have persisted well beyond the demise of chattel slavery and the repeal of Jim Crow laws.

Scholar W.E.B. Du Bois first exposed this kind of structural inequality in his 1899 analysis of Black life in the urban north, “The Philadelphia Negro.” Though he noted distinctions of affluence and status within Black society, Du Bois found the lives of African Americans to be a world apart from white residents: a “city within a city.” Du Bois traced the high rates of poverty, crime and illiteracy prevalent in Philadelphia’s Black community to discrimination, divestment and residential segregation – not to Black people’s degree of ambition or talent.

More than a half-century later, with characteristic eloquence, Martin Luther King Jr. similarly decried the persistence of the “other America,” one where “the buoyancy of hope” was transformed into “the fatigue of despair.”

To illustrate his point, King referred to many of the same factors studied by Du Bois: the condition of housing and household wealth, education, social mobility and literacy rates, health outcomes and employment. On all of these metrics, Black Americans fared worse than whites. But as King noted, “Many people of various backgrounds live in this other America.”

The benchmarks of development invoked by these men also featured prominently in the 1962 book “The Other America,” by political scientist Michael Harrington, founder of a group that eventually became the Democratic Socialists of America. Harrington’s work so unsettled President John F. Kennedy that it reportedly galvanized him into formulating a “war on poverty.”

Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, waged this metaphorical war. But poverty bound to discrete places. Rural areas and segregated neighborhoods stayed poor well beyond mid-20th-century federal efforts.

In large part that is because federal efforts during that critical time accommodated rather than confronted the forces of racism, according to my research.

Across a number of policy domains, the sustained efforts of segregationist Democrats in Congress resulted in an incomplete and patchwork system of social policy. Democrats from the South cooperated with Republicans to doom to failure efforts to achieve universal health care or unionized workforces. Rejecting proposals for strong federal intervention, they left a checkered legacy of local funding for education and public health.

Today, many years later, the effects of a welfare state tailored to racism is evident — though perhaps less visibly so — in the inadequate health policies driving a shocking decline in average American life expectancy.

Declining democracy

There are other ways to measure a country’s level of development, and on some of them the U.S. fares better.

The U.S. currently ranks 21st on the United Nations Development Program’s index, which measures fewer factors than the sustainable development index. Good results in average income per person – $64,765 – and an average 13.7 years of schooling situate the United States squarely in the developed world.

Its ranking suffers, however, on appraisals that place greater weight on political systems.

The Economist’s democracy index now groups the U.S. among “flawed democracies,” with an overall score that ranks between Estonia and Chile. It falls short of being a top-rated “full democracy” in large part because of a fractured political culture. This growing divide is most apparent in the divergent paths between “red” and “blue” states.

Although the analysts from The Economist applaud the peaceful transfer of power in the face of an insurrection intended to disrupt it, their report laments that, according to a January 2022 poll, “only 55% of Americans believe that Mr. Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

Election denialism carries with it the threat that election officials in Republican-controlled jurisdictions will reject or alter vote tallies that do not favor the Republican Party in upcoming elections, further jeopardizing the score of the U.S. on the democracy index.

Red and blue America also differ on access to modern reproductive care for women. This hurts the U.S. gender equality rating, one aspect of the United Nations’ sustainable development index.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republican-controlled states have enacted or proposed grossly restrictive abortion laws, to the point of endangering a woman’s health.

I believe that, when paired with structural inequalities and fractured social policy, the dwindling Republican commitment to democracy lends weight to the classification of the U.S. as a developing country.

American exceptionalism

To address the poor showing of the United States on a variety of global surveys, one must also contend with the idea of American exceptionalism, a belief in American superiority over the rest of the world.

Both political parties have long promoted this belief, at home and abroad, but “exceptionalism” receives a more formal treatment from Republicans. It was the first line of the Republican Party’s national platform of 2016 and 2020 (“we believe in American exceptionalism”). And it served as the organizing principle behind Donald Trump’s vow to restore “patriotic education” to America’s schools.

In Florida, after lobbying by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state board of education in July 2022 approved standards rooted in American exceptionalism while barring instruction in critical race theory, an academic framework teaching the kind of structural racism Du Bois exposed long ago.

With a tendency to proclaim excellence rather than pursue it, the peddling of American exceptionalism encourages Americans to maintain a robust sense of national achievement – despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

US announces plans to expand “industrial base” for war with Russia

Andre Damon

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that the United States and its allies are planning to “expand their nations’ industrial base” for building bombs, rockets and artillery for the war with Russia in Ukraine.

In the name of “providing long-term support to Ukraine,” the world’s leading imperialist powers are massively escalating their wartime production of “ground-based long range fires, air defense systems, air-to-ground munitions.”

The New York Times called the announcement a “Turning Point for Allies Arming Ukraine” and a “sign that the United States and its allies believe that the fighting in Ukraine will last years.”

That same day, Washington announced plans to more than double the number of long-range HIMARS missile launchers sent to Ukraine. According to the Pentagon, the US will spend another $1.1 billion on arms shipments to the country.

These moves come as Russia has declared that it would recognize the independence of four Ukrainian territories partially under its control, in what is expected to be the prelude to their formal annexation on Friday.

On Monday, a series of attacks took place on the Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II pipelines, which have the capability of transferring natural gas from Russia to Germany. Ending the Nord Stream II pipeline project was a major goal of the United States in seeking to provoke a war with Russia.

Although no state has taken responsibility for the attacks, Radosław Sikorski, the former Foreign Minister of Poland and husband of US state operative Anne Applebaum, tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” before subsequently deleting the tweet.

These developments follow a major military debacle for Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine earlier this month, in which Ukrainian US-NATO proxy forces advanced dozens of miles in a matter of days. In the wake of the collapse of Russian defenses in the Kharkiv region, the Kremlin threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war, while US officials declared that they would not be “deterred” from escalating their involvement in the war by the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The lightning advance by Ukraine was made possible by the fact that the United States had provided its most sophisticated ground-based missile and anti-aircraft systems to Ukrainian troops and had proposed, organized and led the offensive.

The United States, having transformed the Ukrainian army into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Pentagon, has effectively emptied its armories of all available weapons to send to the country.

The weapons shipment announced by the Pentagon on Wednesday will be the first in which the United States is not drawing down existing inventories of weapons but rather directly commissioning defense contractors to build weapons potentially years in the future, the Pentagon said.

“Unlike Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which DoD has continued to leverage to deliver equipment to Ukraine from DoD stocks at a historic pace, USAI is an authority under which the United States procures capabilities from industry,” the Pentagon said. “This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine in the mid- and long-term.”

The Pentagon noted, “In total, the United States has now committed approximately $16.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021. Since 2014, the United States has committed approximately $19 billion in security assistance to Ukraine more than $16.2 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24.”

The US has, for example, sent more than 1.5 million 155mm howitzer shells to Ukraine, while it only produces 30,000 shells per year in peacetime.

“The military stocks of most [European NATO] member states have been, I wouldn’t say exhausted but depleted in a high proportion, because we have been providing a lot of capacity to the Ukrainians,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, said earlier this month.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared, “We are now working with industry to increase production of weapons and ammunition, somehow as a whole to increase production.”

“The United States needs to maintain stockpiles to support war plans,” Mark Cancian, a former US Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told CNBC. “For some munitions, the driving war plan would be a conflict with China over Taiwan or in the South China Sea,” he said.

Alongside its rearmament plan, the United States has this week announced plans to reorganize how it commands, arms and equips its proxy forces in Ukraine, creating a unified command structure to organize the war effort.

So far, the Pentagon has not admitted to the creation of the new command structure in order to, according to the New York Times, “avoid feeding into the narrative of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that his country is at war with the United States.”

The Times reports that “The system would be placed under a single new command based in Germany that would be led by a high-ranking U.S. general, according to several military and administration officials.”

The newspaper added, “The new command, which would report to General Cavoli, would carry out the decisions made by the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of 40 countries that the Defense Department created after the Russian invasion to address Ukraine's needs and requests.

“About 300 people would be dedicated to the mission, which would be in Wiesbaden, Germany, the U.S. Army’s headquarters in Europe. Much of the training of Ukrainian soldiers on U.S. weapons systems is already taking place there or nearby,” the New York Times reported.

Amid the escalation of the war, the US Embassy in Moscow has urged its citizens to leave Russia, declaring, “U.S. citizens should not travel to Russia, and those residing or traveling in Russia should depart Russia immediately while limited commercial travel options remain.”

After the Bank of England intervention financial turmoil continues

Nick Beams

Turbulence in global financial markets is continuing in the wake of the Bank of England’s intervention in the UK bond market crisis, which threatened the solvency of pension funds and a crisis in the financial system on a scale of, or possibly even greater than, the meltdown of 2008.

People wait to enter the Bank of England in London, Tuesday, September 27, 2022. [AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

Bond yields in the UK market have come down somewhat as bond prices have risen (they move in opposite directions) and sterling has clawed back some of its losses against the US dollar, after it threatened to fall to parity with the US currency.

Yesterday, a leading article in the Wall Street Journal warned: “Mounting volatility in government bond markets is intensifying fears on Wall Street that this year’s wild swings in the world’s safest assets could destabilize already rocky financial markets.”

It noted that before the BoE intervention, the yield on the 10-year US Treasury note, which is regarded as benchmark for the US and global financial system, had risen to above 4 percent for the first time in more than a decade.

The upward movement “marked the latest explosion in normally placid debt markets, raising investor concerns that the year-long selloff in bonds has entered a new and more dangerous phase.”

The rise in bond yields is already having an impact on the economy with the report yesterday that the average interest rate on a 30-year home mortgage is now 6.7 percent, more than double the level of 3.01 percent just a year ago. One of the fears is that rising mortgage rates will precipitate a sharp fall in the housing industry.

So far this year, major bond indexes in the US have had their biggest ever losses and the stock market continues to gyrate as it moves down, with the key S&P 500 index losing 22 percent so far this year.

After a surge on Wall Street following the BoE intervention on Wednesday, there was a selloff yesterday with the S&P 500 closing at its lowest point for 2022 as the yields on Treasury bonds reached some of their highest levels for the year. As one portfolio manager commented to the WSJ: “This volatility is quite breathtaking.”

Chris Turner, global head of markets at the financial giant ING, told the newspaper that central banks remained “wholly focused” on taking rates higher “even if that means causing a recession.”

He said the “massive intervention” from the BoE, in which it has committed to spend £65 billion buying up UK government debt, “stabilized things for 12 hours, but obviously they haven’t addressed the fundamental challenges.”

Some of those “fundamental challenges” emerge from an examination of the way the crisis erupted in response to the Tory government’s “smash and grab” mini-budget last Friday, which gave a £45 billion handout to the corporations and the super-rich. 

The adverse reaction of the financial markets was not to the handout, but because the additional money flow, which they always welcome, was not accompanied by further deep attacks on social spending, but was to be financed by increasing government debt to the tune of £72 billion.

The prospect of a further rise in debt, increasing the supply of bonds, produced a rapid drop in their prices, sending their yield skyrocketing. The immediate impact was on pension funds, which are among the largest purchasers of government debt.

Pension funds pursue what is known as liquidity-driven investment (LDI). That is, they generally do not engage in speculative measures aimed at securing higher returns that “beat” the market.

They seek to ensure that their income flows and the value of their assets will cover their liabilities to retirees. But to do this they need to undertake derivative trades, financed by borrowing, to hedge against market movements to ensure this is the case.

This borrowing is backed by the collateral they hold in the form of government bonds and cash. But when the price of the underlying asset, government bonds, falls precipitously, as it did at the start of the week, the lender demands more cash.

To meet these demands, the pension funds must sell bonds, sending their price down even further, thereby precipitating a “doom-loop.” It reached a point where one analyst warned that had the BoE not intervened, 90 percent of pensions funds could have been rendered insolvent.

In a comment on the crisis, Financial Times columnist Robin Wigglesworth made some important observations about what had been revealed.

He noted it had hammered home a truism derived from past experiences: that “the greatest damage is often caused by supposedly stolid investments that turned out to be anything but,” and “truly cataclysmic financial debacles tend to involve investment strategies [such as LDI] and financial securities that everyone thought were boring.”

“What else like this may be lurking out there?” he continued. “What is the next debacle within some unlikely corner of the global financial system. We are likely going to find out soon.”

Throughout the present crisis the word “confidence” has been used repeatedly. The capacity of the financial system to continue to siphon wealth to the upper echelons of society depends on confidence that its operations will not be impeded either by maladministration on the part of governments or the struggles of the working class.

Over the past decades of growing financial turbulence, going back to the stock market crash of October 1987, confidence has been restored by the intervention of the Fed and other central banks as they pumped more money into the system. But these operations—each one bigger than the last—were able to be carried out in conditions vastly different from those of today.

Inflation was at historic lows and the movement of the working class was suppressed by the trade unions—strike activity, the most basic indicator of the class struggle, was at historic lows—and real wages were on a continuous downward trajectory.

Today inflation is at a four-decade high, and the working class is striving to break out of the grip of the trade union bureaucracy, most notably in the UK and the US as other sections also start to move into action in support of wage demands and an end to increasingly intolerable conditions of exploitation.

This means the restoration of confidence cannot take place through the methods employed by central banks in the past.

It requires a massive assault on the social position of the working class, to suppress wages and drive up exploitation to new levels to increase the flow of surplus value into the financial system and sustain the mountain of debt and fictitious capital built up over decades.

The outlines of this class war are already clear. The central banks are raising interest rates, not to bring down inflation, but to induce a recession and suppress wage demands. At the same time, the knives are being sharpened for major attacks on social services, health and education spending, which represent a deduction from the pool of surplus value available for appropriation by finance capital.

The UK Tory government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, responding to the criticism of its mini-budget, has issued statements that “iron discipline” must be imposed on public spending.

The unions know very well what is ahead. A letter signed by 18 unions said austerity would be an “act of national vandalism.” But at the time, while writing letters to the Tories, they are working night and day to suppress the struggle by workers to bring down the Truss government.

The same class mechanics are on display in the US where the unions are trying might and main to sell out every strike.

In financial circles, the response to the latest data on initial jobless claims, which showed they had fallen to their lowest levels since April, was that the Fed would have to be even more aggressive on rate hikes.

As one investment strategist told the WSJ; “The Fed is trying very hard to inflict pain on the jobs markets and it’s not working. That maintains the narrative that the Fed is going to have to be tighter for longer.”

The ruling classes in the US, the UK and around the world have a counter-revolutionary strategy which they intend to impose as the only solution to the deepening crisis of the profit system over which they preside.

Margaret McNamara Educational Grants (MMEG) Scholarships 2023

Application Deadline: 15th January 2023

Offered annually? Yes

Accepted Fields of Study: Any field of study

To be taken at (country): United States (US) & Canada

About the Award: The Margaret McNamara Educational Grants (MMEG) provides grants to women from developing countries to help further their education and strengthen their leadership skills to improve the lives of women and children in developing countries. About $15,000 Education grants are awarded to women from developing and middle-income countries who, upon obtainment of their degree, intend to return to or remain in their countries, or other developing countries, and work to improve the lives of women and/or children.

Offered Since: 1981

Type: Masters

Who is qualified to apply for Margaret McNamara Educational Grants? Applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:

• Be at least 25 years old at time of application deadline (see specific regional program application below);
• Be a national of a country listed on the MMEG Country Eligibility List (listed below);
• Be enrolled at an accredited academic institution when submitting application; and plan to be enrolled for a full academic term after award of the grant by the Board;
• Not be related to a World Bank Group, International Monetary Fund or Inter-American Development Bank staff member or spouse;

Number of Scholarships: Not Specified

Margaret McNamara Educational Grants benefits: Approximately $15,000 per scholarship recipient

Duration: The grant is a onetime award to last for the duration of study

Eligible African Countries: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Rep., Chad, Congo, Dem. Rep., Congo, Rep, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt , Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Other Countries:

Afghanistan, Ecuador , Macedonia, FYR of , Albania, Arab Rep., Serbia, El Salvador, Seychelles, Malaysia, Antigua and Barbuda, Eritrea, Maldives, Solomon Islands, Argentina, Armenia, Fiji, Marshall Islands, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh , St. Kitts and Nevis, Belarus, Georgia, Mexico, St. Lucia, Belize, Micronesia, Fed. Sts , St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Grenada, Bhutan, Guatemala, Moldova, Suriname, Bolivia, Mongolia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Syrian Arab Rep., Guyana, Tajikistan, Brazil, Haiti, Bulgaria, Honduras, Myanmar, Thailand, India, Timor-Leste, Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia, Iran, Islamic Rep. of, Nicaragua,Tonga, Iraq, Trinidad and Tobago, Cape Verde, Jamaica, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Palau, Turkmenistan, Chile, China, Kiribatii, Panama, Colombia, Korea, Republic of, Papua New Guinea, Ukraine, Comoros, Kosovo, Paraguay, Uruguay, Kyrgyz Rep, Peru, Uzbekistan, Lao PDR, Philippines, Vanuatu, Costa Rica, Latvia, Poland, Venezuela, RB, Lebanon, Romania, Vietnam, Croatia, Russian Federation, West Bank & Gaza, Yemen, Rep, Dominica, Samoa, Dominican Republic, São Tomé and Principe

How to Apply: Apply via Scholarship Webpage link below.

Remember to read the Application Checklist & FAQs before applying, and when applying (after signing up), select “US-Canada program” in the first question of the application. If the programme name does not appear, the programme may be closed to new applications.

Visit Scholarship webpage for details

Important Notes: Please make sure to submit ALL documents as listed. Only complete applications will be accepted. Decisions will be announced by April.

The Electricity Crisis in South Africa Continues to Brew

Vashna Jagarnath

Electricity

At the end of apartheid in 1994, only 36 percent of households in South Africa were electrified, with almost all white households having electric power and most Black households having no access to electricity. Ten years later, more than 80 percent of households were electrified. This was an important achievement, albeit one that mostly left out the residents of the rapidly growing shantytowns across the country.

But this progress came to a halt in 2007 when South Africa first began to endure “load shedding,” which is the cutting of power supply to different areas on a rotational basis. Load shedding, implemented when the state-owned electricity company Eskom is unable to provide power to the whole country and the electricity grid needs to be kept stable, seems to have reached a new nadir in recent days with most areas going without power for up to 12 hours a day. There have been warnings that total blackouts may be necessary.

Eskom has been unable to provide a stable supply of electricity for 15 years due to a lack of investment in keeping infrastructure up to date and its poor maintenance, a period of plunder under the kleptocratic regime of former President Jacob Zuma, and a longstanding state austerity program that has resulted in general disinvestment from state-owned companies.

The energy crisis has been very damaging to an economy already reeling from socially devastating deindustrialization, state austerity, and the increasing hold of political mafias over economic life. It has been estimated that load shedding has led to the economy losing R500 billion (just over $28 billion) since 2018, working out to about R1 billion per stage, per day.

South Africa has much higher rates of electricity connections compared to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, where about 90 percent of the children who are able to afford a primary school education attend schools that do not have electricity. But with load shedding causing power to be off for much of the day many people in South Africa can often face similar conditions to those living in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. Given that South Africa is currently the most unequal country in the world, the deepening energy crisis further widens the gulf between the rich and the poor, with the latter being overwhelmingly Black and comprising a largely female population.

According to the latest reports, more than 30.4 million people in South Africa live below the poverty line, out of a current population of 60.6 million. About 50 percent of the population lives on R1,335 a month, or approximately $75 a month. The basic cost of electricity for a low-income household is approximately between R1,100 and R1,500, which is already higher than what half the population subsists on. Along with widespread food insecurity, it is likely that the same population of more than 30 million South Africans also concurrently experience “energy poverty,” a term used to describe a situation in which electricity, gas, and other sources of energy bills make up a larger percentage of the household expenditure, making it difficult for South Africans to cover other costs such as food, rent, and clothing. Also, the reduced use of energy in households and workplaces has a negative impact on their physical and mental health. In shack settlements, the lack of electricity has long meant that people cook using candles and gas to light up their homes while living in cramped conditions resulting in regular fires, which are often devastating. With frequent load shedding, fires are now likely to become more common in other types of housing also.

Moreover, South Africa had the eighth highest murder rate in the world in 2020, and the fourth highest rate of gender-based violence in the world, according to 2016 figures. The increased hours of load shedding and the radical decrease of access to electrification will make this pervasive violence worse. A 2017 study carried out in Brazil on the socioeconomic impact of electrification found that it results in a significant decrease in gender-based violence due to better lighting in public spaces.

The burden of social reproduction has always largely fallen on the shoulders of women. Access to electricity can reduce this. An important 2021 study titled “Powering Households and Empowering Women” found that by freeing up women’s time poverty is reduced by creating opportunities for women and girls to develop livelihoods, enter the labor force, or focus on school. It can also reduce exposure to harmful indoor air pollutants, improve maternal health, and reduce gender-based violence.

Demand for the resolution of the electricity crisis has been one of the few issues that have helped bring the poor, the working class, and the middle class together. But, so far, the demands for the resolution of the crisis are not well organized and have been met with little more than platitudes by the ruling elites, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The African National Congress’s (ANC) commitment to neoliberal austerity has meant that there is insufficient investment in the state electricity company. Their only proposal is to move from state-owned coal-fired power stations, which are highly polluting, to privately owned renewable forms of energy. Currently, one of the best-placed people to benefit from this is the president’s billionaire brother-in-law, Patrice Motsepe, given his investments in renewable energy.

Trade unions in South Africa have insisted that while a move to renewables is welcomed, undertaking it via privatization will raise the costs of electric power for the poor and the working class and result in a bias toward serving the needs of the capitalists and the rich. They have proposed that renewables should be socially owned and managed.

The proposals from the unions have been ignored, austerity continues, and there has been minimal movement toward private electricity production. The situation is one of stasis.

Experts believe that very high rates of economically and socially damaging load shedding are likely to continue for at least the next three to four years. Many analysts have argued that this is likely to hit the ruling ANC very hard in the next presidential election, scheduled for 2024. A crisis in terms of electric power could lead to a loss of political power. With right-wing and xenophobic parties rapidly advancing, this is not cause for easy optimism.

South Africa will not move into the light until the social value of access to electricity is affirmed. The proposal by the trade unions for a shift to socially owned and managed renewable energy is the best option on the table. We need a solution that is for the majority and not the few.

After weeks of silence from union, Mercedes-Benz begins mass firings in Brazil

Eduardo Parati

Reports from Mercedes-Benz workers at the São Bernardo do Campo plant in the ABC industrial region have exposed the results of what have been weeks of meetings between the ABC’s Metalworkers Union (SMABC) and the auto company. Hundreds of contract workers arrived at the plant on Monday to discover that they are being summarily fired as part of the company's announcement earlier this month that it would cut 3,600 jobs.

Mercedes-Benz workers in assembly in São Bernardo do Campo, September 8, 2022 (Adonis Guerra/SMABC/FotosPublicas)

In addition to the workers who have been targeted for cuts, including 2,200 company employees and 1,400 contract workers, Mercedes had announced on September 6 that it would outsource several sectors within the plant, including logistics, maintenance, tooling, laboratory, front axle and mid-transmission manufacturing and assembly.

Union bureaucrats are responding with efforts to divide the different sectors within the plant and prevent a strike by its approximately 9,000 workers. Under conditions of enormous anger among workers, and with only a few days left before the presidential election on Sunday, the bureaucracy of the SMABC, affiliated to the Workers Party (PT)-controlled trade union federation, the CUT, is assisting the company in the job cuts while trying to divert opposition into the reactionary channels of economic nationalism.

On Monday afternoon, after the firings, the union called a meeting for only the 361 contract workers whose contracts are set to expire on October 3, a fraction of the thousand targeted for termination in the next weeks.

On Tuesday, at the SMABC headquarters, the union bureaucrats tried to deflect anger by blaming the job cuts on Chinese workers. While stating that they were occurring because the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, wanted to import buses from China, they advanced the absurd claim that the only way to stop the cuts would be to elect the PT candidate, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.

Critically, the bureaucrats felt obliged to cite the World Socialist Web Site article denouncing the union’s sabotage of the workers’ struggle in the plant. While the bureaucrats derided the article, they limited themselves to declaring it fake news. They felt the need to discredit the WSWS because it is the only publication speaking the truth to the workers at Mercedes, and the article clearly resonated broadly within the rank-and-file.

Meanwhile, almost at the same time that the SMABC bureaucrats were gathering the fired workers at the union's headquarters, its executive director, Aroaldo da Silva, was working to contain an eruption at the Mercedes plant.

After the logistics workers saw that the company was already bringing suppliers into the factory to plan the outsourcing of their sector, showing that there isn’t actually any “negotiation” going on with the union, the workers themselves downed tools on Tuesday morning. Fearing that the rebellion would spread, Silva gathered the logistics workers in the courtyard to contain the job action to the logistics sector and to only the morning shift. He declared that they would hold work stoppages on separate shifts and separate days “so as not to stop production”.

Silva told the logistics workers that any amount of job cuts demanded by Mercedes must be accepted so as not to harm the company's profits. “We have to do all the probing possible to try to lessen the impact on the sector,” Silva said.

Tuesday’s events show that the union works to keep autoworkers divided even within the same plant. No trust can be placed in the union bureaucrats defending even workers most immediate rights to a decent job and working conditions. The fact that the union bureaucrats are not responding to the mass firings by denouncing them, but by covering them up, exposes its dirty maneuver in collaboration with the company.

In the last three weeks since Mercedes announced the cuts, the SMABC leaders have made every effort to keep workers divided, failing to make any call for the 1,400 contract workers to be hired as full-contract employees. The union called a three-day strike in the plant to keep it isolated, without calling for any joint job action with other workers in the auto industry. In the three weeks since Mercedes' announcement, the bureaucrats have made a systematic effort to impose an information blackout among the workers.

One contract worker who contacted the World Socialist Web Site denounced the union’s maneuvers the day before the firings began on Monday.

He said that “The union doesn’t have any information [about the layoffs], they just talk about how hard it is and that the company won’t back down. When the union talks about contract workers, it says that the company “doesn’t know, that they haven’t said anything, they don’t touch on the subject. That means that the union itself doesn’t touch on the subject in the meetings, which they say have been going on since September 6. But they won’t say anything about the meetings, and just say that ‘they are negotiating’, and that ‘the company doesn’t want to back down’.”

The worker pointed out that the union gave unofficial statements a few days before to sectors inside the plant, saying that “nothing is certain yet”.

There is no reason to believe that the union bureaucrats were unaware of Mercedes’ plans to move forward the termination of the contract workers. They have been meeting with the company since the September 6 as these workers approached their contracts’ expiration dates.

As SMABC president Aroaldo da Silva himself admitted, the bureaucrats had known for a long period of time about the company’s plans to implement various “restructuring” measures, including job cuts. Silva had stated to the crowd at the assembly three weeks ago, “We have been dialoguing about these issues. The management of Mercedes began to present a scenario in which the company has not been making the expected profit. ... According to them, it was necessary to start discussing the São Bernardo plant so that the worst wouldn’t happen.”

The worker pointed to the general role of the union in suppressing workers’ struggles. He declared: “I've worked at Volkswagen, at GM, and the union always carries out the same maneuvers: they say they are doing something. But in the end they serve the bourgeoisie, the businessmen, and we are left with the crumbs”.

After years of acting as an auxiliary of the auto companies in cutting wages and jobs, and blaming workers of other countries for factory closures, the PT-linked union wants workers to support the election campaign of former president Lula da Silva, who has campaigned on the same nationalist program advocated by the union and Bolsonaro himself.

This program is a critical component in the attempt to suppress working class opposition in Brazil in the name of “national development”. The SMABC bureaucracy is promoting this nationalist program as a component of the PT campaign through the “10+ Industry Plan.”

The plan, promoted in a meeting of Aroaldo da Silva and the central unions with Lula’s vice-presidential candidate Geraldo Alckmin, calls for the construction of “multipartite” organizations, which would in practice subordinate the working class to the dictates of the transnational corporations as they demand ever more cuts in labor costs. This would mean more cuts in wages and jobs and intensifying exploitation of the workers to maximize profits and attract investments.

German secret service operates hundreds of far-right social media profiles

Christoph Vandreier

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) employs at least 100 agents, each with up to five or six identities, who engage in right-wing extremist hate speech on the Internet and commit “crime typical of the milieu,” such as sedition. This information came to light in an interview with an agent of the German domestic intelligence service in the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung which was published last week.

The entrance of the headquarters of the German domestic intelligence service, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. [AP Photo/Martin Meissner]

According to the agent, the task of the agents is not only to “swim along” but also to spread right-wing extremist positions and commit crimes. “Of course, I empower people in their world view,” she explains. “In principle, I spread an ideology that others find better.” Crimes are also committed for this purpose, she added. “The many people who are victims of far-right online hate speech would probably be amazed if they knew what is being posted and liked in the meantime on the orders of the state,” commented the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).

Given that there are 500 right-wing extremist online identities and many more in the environs of the Reichsbürger movement and among COVID-19 deniers, which are no longer called right-wing extremists by the secret service, one must assume that a considerable part of the fascistic swamp online and the far-right terrorist milieu is state-organized.

The fact that the commission of crimes is the state’s focus, and not their uncovering, is made clear by the examples cited by the SZ as the agents’ investigation successes. When ZDF television’s magazine Frontal uncovered a right-wing terrorist group called “Dresden Offline Networking,” which was planning the assassination of Saxony’s Minister President Michael Kretschmer, the authorities only subsequently made it public that they themselves were represented in the group.

The police “did not have to first confiscate the material from ZDF,” said a high-ranking secret service agent proudly, according to SZ. They already had evidential screenshots, including time stamps. The question inevitably arises as to why investigation proceedings had not already been initiated before publication by ZDF reporters. The reason given was that the group needed to be protected.

The case is similar with the right-wing terrorist chat group “United Patriots,” which planned the kidnapping of health minister Karl Lauterbach (Social Democrats). In this case, the authorities initiated investigations before the publication, but the ARD magazine Report Mainz had been observing the group based on the work of an anti-fascist activist for a long time. The secret service could have simply dealt with the issue prior to publication.

Regardless of whether the pending investigations can demonstrate that the agents gave the impetus to the planned terrorist attacks, a picture emerges of a right-wing extremist milieu organized and controlled by the state.

Numerous studies have shown that, for example, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is massively over-represented in reach and dissemination on social media compared to the other parties. Although the AfD only receives about 10 percent in parliamentary elections, the party’s contributions are shared more than twice as often as those from any other party. The activities of the secret service likely play a significant role in this.

The central role of the German domestic intelligence service in the building up of the fascist swamp is well documented. Already in 2003, judges of the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a ban of the neo-Nazi NPD when it became known that at least one in seven functionaries of the fascist party was on the payroll of the secret service. The judges stated that the NPD should “be referred to as a state affair.”

The secret service also played a central role in the establishment of the largest right-wing terrorist group to date, the National Socialist Underground (NSU). In Thuringia, the right-wing extremist Helmut Roewer set up the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the 1990s and employed, among others, Tino Brandt, the head of the “Thuringian Homeland Security,” as a covert investigator.

Brandt received a total of €200,000 in taxpayers’ money to build his neo-fascist organization, which included the three subsequent NSU assassins. When they went into hiding to plan their assassination attempts, Brandt kept in touch with them. The secret service even supplied the NSU trio with €2,000 so that they could get new passports. An employee of the secret service, Andreas Temme, was even present at one of the murders carried out by the NSU. His influence also led to the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke.

The list could go on indefinitely—from the production and dispatch of inhuman, fascist CDs in Brandenburg, which was organized by the secret service, to the founding of the German branch of the Ku Klux Klan by an employee of the secret service.

This policy has been systematically pursued in recent years. After the close ties of the secret service with the NSU became known, the federal government appointed the openly right-wing extremist Hans-Georg Maassen to head the authority. Maassen not only covered up the NSU affair but also expanded support for the far right. For example, he met regularly with the AfD representatives and discussed the secret service’s Verfassungsschutz Report with them.

The budget of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution alone has almost doubled in the last five years from €253 million to €423 million. There were similar increases for the secret services of Germany’s 16 states. The federal government is deliberately expanding the secret service into a control centre for the far-right movement.

Through this fascistic agency and its far-right networks, the government is taking action against anyone who opposes its war policy, the social crisis and the fabulous enrichment of the wealthy. In 2018, the Verfassungsschutz under Maassen designated the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP, Socialist Equality Party) for the first time as a “left-wing extremist association,” thus preparing the party’s banning. The secret service’s action was accompanied by far-right attacks on SGP events, for example, at the Humboldt University or at the University of Dresden.

After the SGP filed a lawsuit against its inclusion in the Verfassungsschutz Report, the German government backed the agency’s actions and declared that even “arguing for an egalitarian, democratic and socialist society” was unconstitutional. In particular, it accused the SGP of agitating “against imperialism and supposed nationalism.” This outrageous attack on democratic rights has since been scandalously supported by two courts.

While the secret service covers up terrorist structures and builds up the far right, it clamps down on anyone who criticizes capitalism and opposes war. This has been intensified by the US-NATO proxy war against Russia on the backs of the Ukrainian people. The largest rearmament since Hitler, unbearable inflation and mass layoffs in industry are meeting growing resistance in the working class. Under these conditions, the government is mobilizing far-right groups and the state apparatus to suppress this opposition.

At the beginning of the year, the wording used in the court decision against the SGP was utilised in part in a ruling against the left-leaning daily newspaper junge Welt, which had filed a lawsuit protesting its surveillance by the secret service. In August, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) announced that she would “fight” alleged “left-wing extremists” in the climate change movement “with all her might.”

Two weeks ago, the Hamburg secret service attacked the initiative for a referendum on the expropriation of the large housing corporations. The presence of “left-wing extremists” was deemed “a determining factor.” According to the police, they advocated a “democratic, decentralized communism” that was “incompatible with the liberal democratic order.”