On Hinduism: Clarifying Some Confusions

T Vijayendra

Introduction

There is quite a lot of political debate going on about Hinduism. Laymen and young cadres are quite confused about it. This article attempts to remove some fog from the issue. So the language is simple and non academic. All dates and figures are rounded off though care is taken that they are not significantly different from more accurate estimates.

   We will attempt to answer four basic questions which to us appear at the root of confusion. They are:

1.      What is Hinduism?

2.      How old is Hinduism?

3.      How many Hindus are there in India?

4.      What is Sanatan Dharma? How many Snatanis are there?

What is Hinduism?

The words Hindu, Hinduism and Hindu Dharma are not from the Indian tradition. They are of Western origin and all relate to the river Sindhu (Hindu) or Indus (India). They refer to the region and people generally east of this river. The Muslim rulers called all non Muslims as Hindus in India. The British called all non Muslims and Christians as Hindus!

   The term Dharma does not mean religion in the Indian tradition. The term for religion in the Indian tradition is ‘Sampradaya’ or sect. But the word Hinduism has acquired a meaning which signifies a set or a group of Sampradayas or sects in India. How do we define this ‘Hinduism’?

   The scholar Rahul Sankrityayan defined Hinduism as having three characteristics:

 1. Belief in the Karma theory and rebirth

 This answered the classic question that all religions must grapple with: Why do good people suffer? And why does the ruling class get away with all the injustice and corruption? The answer in Hinduism is that you are born in a particular caste and you get what you deserve because of the Karma or deeds you did in the past birth. If you behave well, that is, obey, follow ethics etc., then in the next birth you will have a better life/be born in a higher caste. The idea of rebirth came from Buddhism as Vedic Aryans did not believe in rebirth. The Karma theory was developed as both Buddhism and Hinduism developed into full fledged religions.

2. Creation of the caste system

The caste system is obviously related to Karma theory as explained above. It is especially Hindu as Vedic Arya, Buddhism and Jainism had no caste system. It was a master stroke to combine the two since it has lasted all these years! This was the Arthashastra and the Manusmriti’s way of consolidating peasant society. What is so special about the caste system? After all, some kind of hierarchy exists in many societies. Ambedkar defined caste as ‘enclosed class’. That is, endogamy (marrying within the caste) is compulsory and exogamy (marrying outside the caste) is prohibited. This effectively curbed unity of the oppressed classes. Even today if a lower caste man marries a woman from upper caste ‘honour’ killing can occur where the man and sometimes woman is also murdered.

   Many tribal communities were probably forced out of their habitat to clear land for agriculture and later were absorbed in to Hindu society as Shudras and Panchamas (untouchables). Untouchability was the Indian form of slavery which continued unhindered till Independence in 1947. It was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the Hindu reformers who finally managed to abolish it legally through the Indian Constitution. However Ambedkar’s dream of abolishing caste probably cannot be realised because caste is quintessentially a Hindu phenomenon. Abolish caste and you abolish Hinduism itself!

 3. Taboo on cow slaughter and beef eating

 This was a classic case of a totem turning into a taboo. Earlier the totemic food for the cattle herding communities was beef and cow sacrifice was a major Vedic ritual. This transformation occurred due to agriculture becoming more important. Buddhism and Jainism also contributed to it. This also distinguished Hindus from the tribals.

 To conclude, Hindus are those people who have belief in 1. Karma theory and rebirth, 2. Caste system 3. and taboo on cow slaughter and beef eating.

How old is Hinduism?

We have dated Hinduism to 200 BCE (Before the Common Era). This needs some explanation as many people keep on saying that Hinduism is thousands of years old. But if you use the above mentioned yardstick of the definition of Hinduism, that is: 1. Belief in karma theory and rebirth, 2. Creation of caste system and 3. Taboo on cow slaughter and beef eating, we will show that the earlier periods in Indian history did not exhibit all these characteristics.

   Indian civilization is normally dated from the Indus Valley Civilization. The Indus Valley Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the North Western regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. We do not know enough about its civilisation because its script has yet to be deciphered. However if we apply the above definition of Hinduism, they were certainly not Hindus! Of course being part of the same subcontinent we have certainly absorbed some of their achievements.

   Present day Hindus themselves trace their origin to the Vedic period (1200 BCE-600 BCE). These people were called Aryans. Cow and beef was totemic food for them. Nor did they believe in rebirth. Certain social divisions were certainly there – warriors, shepherds, peasants and traders – but they were not rigidly frozen as castes and certainly untouchability was not there. Actually the main division was probably ‘Aryans and Nonaryans’ communities.

    Hinduism as we know today dates from the Arthashastra and Dharmashastra (or Manusmriti) around 200 BCE. These texts got consolidated between 200 BCE and 300 AD. Buddhism and Jainism, dating from 500 BC, were a big challenge to Hinduism which lasted up to 800 AD. Buddhism then almost vanished from India, but Jainism has survived as a small but powerful sect of traders. However, their daily life is indistinguishable from other upper caste Hindus except for their strict vegetarianism. For all practical purposes, Jainism is treated as one of the Sampradayas of Hinduism.

    What happened during this period that allowed Hinduism to consolidate? The answer in one word is ‘iron’. The coming of the Iron Age made settled agriculture the mainstay of the economy. Iron ploughs and tools helped clear forests and improve agriculture production. This in turn supported the formation of a stable State in two ways. It made it possible to impose taxes and also supported an urban population and army with food. The taxes helped to pay the army and bureaucracy. Iron also gave better weapons to the army.

    Now a State is an instrument of the ruling class to serve its interests and keep the ruled classes under control. This control is rarely done by force, although it is always there. Most of the time however, this control is done through a set of cultural processes which legitimise or justify the system of State power. Among them, religion is one of the most important one. In modern times democracy and elections also perform this role. In ancient India, Arthashastra by Chanakya and Dharmashastra or Manusmriti by Manu helped legitimise the State and consolidate Hinduism.

    Thus Hinduism is about 2200 year old, that is about 200 years older than Christianity and 800 years older than Islam!

 How many Hindus are there in India?

The numbers used in this section are rough estimates, rounded off to make reading simpler. But as we said in the beginning they do not significantly differ from accurate estimates.

   Today the Indian population is roughly estimated as 140 crores (1400 million or 1.4 billion). But we will use 2011 data as no census so far has been conducted since then. We will also round off data for ease of reading. According to the 2011 census, total Population in 2011 was 121.1 crores; Hindu 96.6 crores (79.8%); Muslim 17.2 crores (14.2%); Christian 2.8 crores (2.3%); Sikh 2.1 crores (1.7%); Buddhist 0.8 crores (0.7%); Jain 0.5 crores (0.4%). Obviously this is just like what the British did – all non Muslims and non Christians were lumped together. This suits those political forces who visualize India primarily a Hindu country, in opposition to the Indian Constitution which visualizes India as a secular country.

   However not all these 79.8% or 97 crores Hindus consider themselves as Hindus. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes comprise about 16.6% and 8.6%, respectively, of India’s population. That is, there are some 23 crores Scheduled Castes and some 12.0 crores Schedule Tribes in India. So there are some 35 crores of SC and ST people. These 35 crores are by most yardsticks not Hindus, though the Sangh Parivar would claim the SC/ST population of 35 crores as Hindus. The remaining 62 crores are unambiguously Hindus. That is to say Hindus constitute about 51% of India’s population. They live in today’s political India. North East India and Kashmir have very few Hindus and Hindu Indians are treated as foreigners/exploiters/enemies by the majority of these people.

   The position of the Scheduled Castes is ambiguous. Traditionally, they were the shudra and panchamas, the lowest castes within the Hindu religion. They might include many tribal communities that were absorbed into Hindu society. The daily life of the Shudras and Panchamas is closer to the tribals because of this history. Their gods and goddesses are not the normal Hindu deities like Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Rama and Krishna. Nor are their festivals the same as Diwali, Dussera, Holi, Ugadi etc. Even in the 20th century, there have been instances of tribals becoming Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Castes going into the forests to become tribals. This probably has happened throughout the last 2000 years, the reason why these communities (today known as Scheduled Castes and Tribes) are viewed outside Hinduism. The political leaders of these communities also do not see a future within Hinduism. Today there is a sense of revolt against mainstream Hinduism, and large-scale conversion to other religions (Christianity, Buddhism and Islam) have occurred much to the anger of Sangh Parivar. What is clear is that the ideology of the Sangh Parivar wants to keep them as slaves and second class citizens within the Hindu fold.

    To conclude this section, there are 62 crores Hindus and they constitute about 51 % of India’s population.

 What is Sanatan Dharma? How many Hindus are Snatanis?

 Recently there has been a huge controversy where some people have suggested that all Hindus do not believe in Sanatan Dharma. So what is Sanatan Dharma?

    From the very beginning Hindu religion had this debate. First it was those sects who accepted the authority of Vedas and there were some who did not. Buddhists and Jains obviously did not. There were other sects at that time who did not accept the authority of Vedas either. So to begin with, Sanatanis are those Hindus who believed in the authority of Vedas and Manusmriti. These people consolidated their power and remained the dominant force up to 8th century A. D. By that time people were getting much oppressed and a religious revolt/reform movement began. This was called the Bhakti movement.

    The Bhakti movement had two distinct strands, referred to as Sagun and Nirgun. Both trends contributed to the emergence of modern Indian languages through Bhakti literature. As a rule, the Sagun tradition is identified with upper castes and Nirgun with the lower castes.

    The word Sagun means ‘with qualities’ and it refers to a concept of God who is all powerful and all knowing. In practice it means identifying God with the king and in the temples there will be an image of God looking like a king with his queen and other court people. Almost all the founders and saints of this tradition were Brahmins. Ramanujacharya (12th c.) is considered to be the main source of the Sagun Bhakti movement. His theology was called Vishishtadvaita, and his Bhakti ideas went by the name of Vaishnavism.  Apart from Brahmins and many traders, peasant castes also followed Vaishnavism, although their priests were normally Brahmins. There were many other founders of the Sagun tradition of Bhakti, who composed and created modern Indian languages. Among others by Chaitanya in Orissa and Bengal, Surdas and Tulsidas in the North and other Vaishnavas of Gujarat, Western M.P., and Rajasthan etc. In content, Sagun Bhakti emphasized obedience and surrender to God!

    As against this, there is a Nirgun (without qualities) tradition. In this there are no deities in a temple and God is regarded as formless. Most of the saints in this tradition were artisans or belonged to the lower castes (except Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh faith, who was a trader). Prominent among them were Kabir and Dadu. The Sikh religion has a book called Grantha Sahib which is a compendium of Nirgun Saints. Many Sufi saints are also included in it, because the Nirgun ideas are close to Sufi ideas. This is the main reason that most of the converts to Islam were artisans! In content Nirgun Bhakti emphasized love and equality among all people. The great classic inter-community love stories like Heer-Ranjha, Laila-Majnu, and Sohni -Mahiwal etc. come from this tradition and have enriched modern languages.

   As per our analysis above it is the people who follow the Sagun trend that can be classed as those Hindus who believe in Sanatan Dharma. In terms of caste, it is the upper castes – Brahmins, Kshatriyas and traders undoubtedly belong to this tradition. SC and ST certainly do not belong to it. Among the OBC (Other backward Castes) the peasants and cattle herding castes also believe in Sagun Dharma. The lower OBC castes, mainly artisan castes – like weaver, carpenter, iron smiths, potters etc. are by and large Nirgunias. So we can define Sanatanis as: Hindus minus Artisan Castes.

    In terms of numbers we will use 2011 data as above. There will be some small confusion because the percentage of OBC varies from state to state and we will take a rough estimate of 40% for all India levels. According to the 2011 census, total Population in 2011 was 121 crores. OBCs account for 40% of India’s population, that is, some 48 crores. So out of 62 crores Hindus, 48 crores are OBCs. And the upper castes account 14 crores only. What is the proportion of artisan caste in the OBC group? This varies from state to state. Caste surveys are being carried out in several states (so far five) and the figures are emerging. A working hypothesis can be 50%. For the country as a whole it can be between 20 – 30 crores. If you take the halfway figure, that is, 24 crores, then the maximum number of Sanatanis among the 62 crores Hindus will be about (62 -24) 38 crores or about 31 % of population. (This is just an estimate. Figures therefore will not fully tally). The number of the upper caste alone will be (38-24) 14 crores.

 To conclude this section, Sanatanis are those Hindus who believed in the authority of Vedas and Manusmriti. Also they are Sagunias, that is, they believe in a God who has qualities! Some 38 crores Hindus or about 31 % of population are Sanatanis.

 Our Figures at a Glance

Note: All figures are rounded off. Estimated means our estimates. This chart is mainly indicative. Figures will not fully tally. We have also adjusted the figures for 2023.     

S. N.	CATEGORY	TOTAL (2011)	PERCENTAGE	Total (2023) Adjusted
1	India	121 crores	100 %	140 crores
2	Hindus	97 crores	80 %	113 crores
7	Scheduled Castes	23 crores	16.6 %	27 crores
8	Scheduled Tribes	12 crores	8.6 %	14 crores
9	Hindus minus SC&ST	62 crores	51 %	72 crores
10	Hindus (Sanatanis)	38( Estimated) crores	31 %	44 crores
11	Hindus (Nirgunias)	24 (Estimated) crores	20 %	28 crores

Massive budget cuts underway at colleges and universities throughout the US

Emma Arceneaux

A new round of sweeping austerity is underway at colleges and universities across the United States. Public and private schools in every part of the country have announced mass layoffs, program eliminations and campus closures in response to significant budget shortfalls as a result of declining enrollment, the ending of federal COVID-19 pandemic funding, and a long-term decline in state investment into higher education. 

West Virginia University students lead a protest against cuts to programs in world languages, creative writing and more amid a $45 million budget deficit outside Stewart Hall in Morgantown, West Virginia on Monday, August 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Leah Willingham]

At the federal level, both the Democrats and Republicans have funneled trillions of dollars to war, corporate bailouts and tax cuts for the rich over the last two decades, but have offered no lifeline to struggling colleges. The most recent data from the Department of Education shows that in 2021, the federal government allocated a mere $13.9 billion in general funds support to public universities, less than 1 percent of discretionary spending that year. 

The following snapshot of cuts in several areas gives a sense of the scale of the looming attacks.

At Bradley University, a private non-profit in Illinois, massive cuts have been proposed to address a $13 million budget shortfall, representing 10 percent of the school’s total operating budget. 

The austerity plan announced by president Stephen Standifird will slash 68 faculty posts from a combination of 47 layoffs and the elimination of another 21 positions through retirements and vacant posts. 

At least 17 programs in the arts, math, sciences and humanities are set to be cut entirely, including Actuarial Science, Statistics, Religious Studies, Printmaking, Ceramics, International Studies, and Public Health Education. 

Significantly, five other programs that are fundamental to a liberal arts education are being considered for either discontinuation or will be converted into “service units” that no longer offer major or minor degrees: Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Economics and French. 

Speaking to local news, Jacob Weinberg, a junior at Bradley, noted that the cuts to the liberal arts programs will have a broad impact. “They might not have the best financial statistics, but they teach you much bigger and, in my opinion, more important ideas.”

At the Castleton campus of the Vermont State University (VTSU) system, Interim President Michael Smith recommended in October the discontinuation of 10 degree programs, the consolidation of 13 additional programs, and the cutting of between 20-33 faculty positions, or 10-15 percent of all faculty. Smith cited a $22 million budget deficit across the VTSU system. 

The programs proposed for discontinuation include Agriculture, Forestry, Photography, Music, School Psychology, Climate Change Science, and Computer Engineering Technology. 

Over a hundred students rallied against the proposal in late October as several state legislators met with staff and faculty union officials. Denouncing the proposed ending of the music program, one student told local news, “Arts are important … It’s involved in everyone’s lives.” 

Linda Olson, sociology professor and the local representative for the American Federation of Teachers at VTSU, reported that the campus is already struggling due to staff shortages: “There are staff positions that are paid so little we can’t find people to do them. … In our building, for example, which is the largest academic building, we are now required to remove our own garbage because we can’t get a person to clean the building.”

The University of Wisconsin-Platteville is set to eliminate 111 positions among faculty, administrators and other staff, representing 12 percent of its workforce. This includes 60 layoffs, plus the elimination of 31 vacant positions. 

The university cited declining enrollment—28 percent over the last decade—high inflation, reduced state funding and an existing tuition freeze as it predicted a $9.7 million budget shortfall for fiscal year 2024. 

Cuts are coming across the University of Wisconsin system. UW-Oshkosh plans to lay off 200 non-faculty employees, over 20 percent of all employees. UW-Parkside will implement employee furloughs, requiring most employees to take between four and 19 unpaid leave days through June 2024. The unpaid days will equal reductions to bi-weekly salaries by between 2.11 and 10 percent. 

In Mississippi, Delta State University in Cleveland faces “across the board cuts” to overcome an $11 million dollar deficit after a decade of “emergency-style budgeting” according to President Daniel Ennis. The university’s enrollment has plummeted 48 percent over the last 16 years. The cuts, which have not been specified, but which will include faculty layoffs, salary cuts and possible program closures, come on top of years of other cuts.

In 2015, faced with a $1 million deficit, the university eliminated multiple programs in the Division of Languages and Literature—Journalism, Communications/Theater, and Modern Foreign Languages. Athletic Training and Real Estate/Insurance were also eliminated that year, as was the student newspaper’s printing budget.

Shepherd University, a public liberal arts institution in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, faces a $6 million deficit in the next two years. $3.8 million in cuts have already been announced, with more to follow, says President Dr. Mary Hendrix. These include 44 staff positions, 16 faculty slots, and four administrative positions. Additionally, one campus is set to be shuttered, and the university is “reviewing” all existing academic programs. 

The latest round of cuts follows years of austerity in higher education. A report published this year by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association on higher education financing notes that, “Although national-level education appropriations have recovered to 2008 levels, the majority of states continue funding higher education at a lower level than prior to the Great Recession. Twenty-eight states have not yet recovered from the 2008 Great Recession. ... Arizona (40.9% below) and Louisiana (32.2% below) are furthest from recovery. Another eight states remain at least 20% below 2008 levels.”

In addition to layoffs and program cuts, the growing financial pressure on colleges has led to mass closures across the US. Since 2016, an estimated 101 public and private non-profit colleges have either closed, merged or have announced plans to do so, according to one monitor. States with the most closures include New York (nine), Massachusetts (nine), California (eight) and Illinois (eight). 

Among the most common casualties of these closures and mergers are art colleges, some of which had operated for over a century: Memphis College of Art and Watkins College of Art in Tennessee; Oregon College of Art and Craft and Pacific Northwest College of Art in Oregon; School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Massachusetts; New Hampshire Institute of Art; and the historic San Francisco Art Institute in California.

US, South Korean leaders pledge greater military cooperation in war drive against China

Ben McGrath

The United States and South Korea on Monday took steps to deepen military cooperation and further inflame tensions in the Indo-Pacific region. Washington is showing that even as it provides complete support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, there will be no easing of the war drive aimed at China.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, with and South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik, before their annual security meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, Monday, Nov. 13, 2023. [AP Photo/Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo]

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Seoul late Saturday alongside the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Charles Brown. On Monday, Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Sin Won-sik held the 55th annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM). They released the 2023 Tailored Deterrence Strategy (TDS), the first revision to the TDS in ten years.

The revisions emphasized “extended deterrence” collaboration, ostensibly directed at North Korea. In reality, this means joint cooperation between Washington and Seoul on the use of US nuclear weapons through the new Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), announced following the April summit between Presidents Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-yeol. The NCG is modeled after a similar body that decides nuclear policy within NATO.

A joint communiqué released after the SCM declared that the “NCG will serve a key role in developing combined defense posture as a bilateral consultative body to strengthen extended deterrence, discuss nuclear and strategic planning, and manage” the supposed North Korean threat.

The communiqué is an outline for a US-instigated nuclear war with China. It employs Washington’s typical thinly-veiled language used to denounce Beijing. Austin and Sin reaffirmed their supposed “respect for international law including freedom of navigation and overflight and other lawful use of the seas, including the South China Sea and beyond.” They further “acknowledged the importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.”

These are not innocent remarks. For years Washington has stoked formerly minor territorial disputes in Southeast Asia to put pressure on Beijing while also overturning the “One China” policy on Taiwan in all but name. The references to the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait are designed to ratchet up tensions by placing them at the center of the allies’ military planning.

The communiqué reiterates US plans for building a web of alliances in the region, first and foremost a trilateral military alliance with South Korea and Japan. The document states that the war-planning summit at Camp David in August “marked a new chapter in US-ROK [South Korea]-Japan security cooperation” and called for the expansion of “trilateral security cooperation including senior-level policy consultations, trilateral exercises, information sharing, and defense exchange cooperation.”

Both Japan and South Korea are key components of Washington’s war plans and the construction of a ballistic missile system targeting China. Austin and Sin met Sunday with Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara, who attended the session remotely from Tokyo, and pledged to launch a three-way missile detection system, sharing information in real-time by next month. They also agreed to develop more detailed plans on holding trilateral war games “more systematically and effectively” beginning in January.

These developments, unveiled shortly before President Biden is set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in San Francisco on Wednesday, serve to apply additional pressure beforehand. Beijing criticized the US-South Korean military plans through a November 13 opinion piece in the Global Times. It warned: “The US-Japan-South Korea security cooperation could accelerate the NATO-ization of the Asia-Pacific region, which will not only have a significant negative impact on the security environment around China, but also on the cooperation process in East Asia.”

The danger of war is not giving the US pause. For all of Washington’s claims of “respect for international law,” the genocide Israel is conducting in Gaza with the full backing of the US makes it glaringly clear what Washington really means by the “rules-based order.” The declaration by the Biden administration that are there are no “red lines” for Israel when it comes to slaughtering Palestinians, likewise means there will be no red line Washington will not cross in stoking and conducting a war with China, including the use of nuclear weapons.

Seoul is using the slaughter in Gaza to promote the US war agenda. At a meeting with Austin on Sunday, South Korean President Yoon called on the US to “maintain the joint Korea-US defense posture that can immediately and firmly punish North Korea even if it miscalculates and carries out any provocation including a Hamas-style surprise attack.”

Seoul has denounced Hamas’ supposed “surprise” attack on October 7, which in reality was a popular uprising against the fascistic Netanyahu regime after decades of brutal suppression by Israel. Yoon has essentially endorsed Israel’s fraudulent claims that it is defending itself, as well as the genocidal methods it is using against the Palestinians. At the same time, Yoon’s administration is creating an atmosphere, without any evidence, that Pyongyang is planning some sort of “surprise” attack.

This provides Washington and its allies with the pretext to continue their military buildups, as they whip up tensions with North Korea, an impoverished former colonial country of 26 million people, through threats and economic isolation. Washington then seizes on any response by Pyongyang to blame China for the situation.

Last week, during a visit to Seoul following a G7 foreign ministers meeting in Tokyo, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that Beijing was not doing enough to influence Pyongyang to give up its weapons programs. “China has a unique relationship with North Korea,” he stated. “We do look to China to use that influence to play a constructive role in pulling North Korea from this irresponsible and dangerous behavior.”

Blinken declared that the Indo-Pacific remained an “area of sustained focus” for the US.

Emphasizing this point, Washington has deployed a number of strategic assets to the region in recent weeks. This includes dispatching a B-52 bomber to the Korean Peninsula, with such an aircraft landing in South Korea for the first time. The bomber took part in trilateral air force drills, the first held between the US, South Korea and Japan. The US has also sent the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier strike group to the region, joining the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier.

Both US aircraft carriers have held significant drills over the past week, with the Carl Vinson taking part in the Exercise 2023 alongside Japan, Canada, Australia and the Philippines, close to where the war games took place.

Currently, the US has two aircraft carrier groups in both the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific, effectively threatening wider and potentially nuclear wars on each side of the Eurasian landmass.

Moody’s lowers US debt outlook to “negative”

Nick Beams

The decision last week by the rating agency Moody’s to downgrade the outlook on the credit status of US government debt from “stable” to “negative” is notable. While still retaining it at AAA, Moody’s update is another expression of American capitalism’s ever-worsening fiscal and financial position and the political turmoil that is both accompanying and feeding into it.

The New York Stock Exchange [AP Photo/J. David Ake]

It followed the move by the rating agency Fitch to lower its long-term rating for the US from AAA to AA+ in August and the S&P downgrade of US debt in 2011.

Moody’s has not gone that far, at least not yet, but the move to “negative” status often precedes an outright downgrade.

The driving forces for the decision are the increase in the US budget deficit, much of it the result of increased military spending, the sharp increase in the interest bill on the debt because of the rate hikes carried out by the US Federal Reserve and the conflicts in Congress which have led to repeated threats of shutdowns of government services.

This Friday, a government shutdown is once again looming—they have become an almost perpetual feature of the political landscape—when a 45-day deal between the Biden administration and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to avert the last crisis and maintain government funding expires.

That deal led to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy losing his position, sparking a revolt led by aggressive Trump supporters which, after weeks of wrangling, resulted in the extreme right-winger Mike Johnson filling the post.

Announcing its decision, Moody’s said: “In the context of higher interest rates, without effective policy measures to reduce government spending or increase revenues, Moody’s expects that the US fiscal deficits will remain very large, significantly weakening debt affordability.”

It warned that continued polarisation within Congress “raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt sustainability.”

The interest rate increases, from near zero to almost 5 percent since rises began in March 2022, are having a major impact. In the third quarter of this year the interest bill on government debt was running at an annual rate of $981 billion, an increase of 54 percent from the first quarter of 2022, and up by 91 percent from the second quarter of 2020.

The US government debt is now more than $33 trillion and rising and stands above 120 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

In a comment piece in the New York Times, columnist Peter Coy recalled that four years ago Olivier Blanchard, a former International Monetary Fund official now at MIT, had said it was possible for a government to run moderate budget deficits forever so long as economic growth exceeded the interest rate.

“The problem,” he continued, “is that deficits in the US have been large, not moderate, and the interest rate on debt now exceeds the economy’s growth rate, rather than vice versa.”

Long-term interest rates are now pushing towards 5 percent while US economic growth is not expected to go much above 2 percent and could even move into recession in the next year.

In a post for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Blanchard said he freely admitted he did not predict the rise in long-term rates.

This failure only points to a more fundamental issue, that of methodology.

Notwithstanding its highly developed mathematical models and the availability of vast computing power, bourgeois economics assumes that the capitalist profit system is the only possible and viable form of economic organisation. It therefore ignores its inherent contradictions until they erupt in the form of crisis which it then puts down to some kind of accident or external factor.

This outlook is reflected in the political sphere. It was seen in the Biden administration’s response to the Moody’s downgrade, largely based on the attempt to assert that all was still for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Deputy Treasury secretary Wally Adeyemo said that while Moody’s had retained the AAA rating, “we disagree with the shift to a negative outlook.

“The American economy remains strong, and Treasury securities are the world’s pre-eminent safe and liquid asset.”

Such an assessment ignores all recent experience. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the Treasury market froze for several days when no buyers could be found for US government debt. A full-blown meltdown of the entire US and global financial system was only averted when the Fed intervened to the tune of $4 trillion.

Ever since then the liquidity problem has bubbled away. It came to the surface, at least partially, earlier this month when the Treasury tailored its issuance of new debt to shorter-term bonds to try to avoid market turbulence.

And rather than a sound and stable institution where the money to fund government activity is calmly raised, the $25 trillion US Treasury market is more and more resembling a giant gambling casino.

Huge bets, the quantity of which is not fully known, are being made in the so-called basis trade, in which investors take advantage of the difference between bond prices and their futures. But because the difference is tiny, vast amounts of money must be borrowed to make a profit, giving rise to what the Fed called in a recent report the potential for “financial stability vulnerability.”

The response from the White House to the Moody’s decision was to shift the blame the Republicans.

“Moody’s decision to change the US outlook is yet another consequence of Congressional Republicans extremism and dysfunction,” said spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, as she accused them of “holding the nation’s full faith and credit hostage.”

The deepening crisis of the US financial system since 2008, attempts by a number of countries to lessen their dependence on the US dollar as the global reserve currency, the ongoing turbulence in the US Treasury market, the rapid interest rate hikes instituted by the Fed and backed by the Biden administration and the impact of ongoing war—to name just some of the features of the present situation—were passed over.

And the very fact that Trump-led forces have been able to gain a certain social base and political traction is due to Democrat attacks on the position of broad sections of working people, with the collaboration of the trade union apparatuses, going back decades.

But for all the political turbulence, there is a consensus in ruling political and financial circles about what must be done to meet the growing crisis in government finances. An all-out attack is being organised against the working class involving the further suppression of wages, cuts in living standards and the gutting of so-called entitlement programs. The only issue in ruling circles is how this is to be carried out.

US Supreme Court papers over rampant corruption with first-ever “Code of Conduct”

Kevin Reed

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States published, for the first time in its history, a document concerning what it calls “ethics rules and principles that guide the conduct of the Members of the Court.”

Members of the Supreme Court sit for a group portrait following the addition of Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, at the Supreme Court building in Washington, Octobert 7, 2022. [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite]

The code elaborates five fundamental principles called “canons” and is signed by all nine justices on the court. The document also contains commentary from the court about this unprecedented statement.

The 15-page document begins with a “Statement of the Court Regarding the Code of Conduct” that dismisses the necessity for the code in the first place. It says the court “has long had the equivalent of common law ethics rules,” derived from various sources, “including statutory provisions, the code that applies to other members of the federal judiciary, ethics advisory opinions issued by the Judicial Conference Committee on Codes of Conduct, and historic practice.”

The opening statement, however, goes on to say that in recent years there has been a “misunderstanding” that Supreme Court Justices “regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules.”

Where has this “misunderstanding” come from? Actually, there is no misunderstanding. Although the court cannot say so, its code of conduct has been made necessary by the fact that it has been exposed before the world as a bought-and-paid-for institution of the corporate and financial elite. A series of exposures over the past year, in particular, have revealed rampant corruption in the US Supreme Court.

These exposures included investigative reports published by ProPublica showing that far-right Justice Clarence Thomas was the recipient of millions of dollars in unreported gifts from billionaire Harlan Crowe, a Republican Party donor and Hitler admirer. Thomas, a member of the court since 1991, has been a central figure in the rightward trajectory of the court, including its decision last year to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.

ProPublica also revealed an undisclosed 2008 flight in a private jet that right-wing Justice Samuel Alito took on a luxury fishing trip to Alaska provided by hedge fund founder and billionaire Paul Singer.

Other reports have revealed that right-wing Justice Neil Gorsuch was involved in the sale of property for $1.8 million in Colorado to the chief executive of the law firm Greenberg Traurig, which litigated cases before the high court. And Jane Roberts, the wife of Chief Justice John Roberts, took in $10.3 million in commissions from elite law firms, at least one of which argued a case before the chief justice after paying his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Meanwhile, corruption has also been revealed among the ostensible “liberal” justices with Justice Stephen Breyer taking 225 subsidized trips all over the world between 2004 and 2018, some of which were paid for by ultra-wealthy supporters of the Democratic Party. Also, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went on a tour of Israel in 2018 that was funded by billionaire Morris Kahn, who had business before the court.

The content of the code and its five canons barely deserve to be mentioned. They are full of absurd references to the “integrity and independence of the judiciary,” the necessity that justices avoid “the appearance of impropriety in all activities,” that they perform the duties of office “fairly, impartially and diligently,” engage in “extrajudicial activities that are consistent with the obligations of the judicial office,” and refrain from “political activity.”

Clearly, the blatant corruption and political influence among the justices of the high court has reached such a degree that all involved have concluded that a statement of denial had to be issued.

Attempting to restore of the reputation of the court in the eyes of the American and world public, the Supreme Court has been working on the code of conduct since 2019. According to the Wall Street Journal on Monday, the court’s legal counsel prepared a draft at that time, “which later was revised with advice from Justice Samuel Alito, but no action was taken for over a year.”

The Journal report goes on to say that “a person familiar with the process” reported that Justice Roberts and his counselor Robert Dow “made additional changes to the code, which the justices discussed for the first time at their private meeting, known as the conference, on September 26.” The unnamed individual said that the justices continued to discuss the proposal “over subsequent conferences,” and on November 9, “all signed off on the version released Monday.”

To some degree, the justices are attempting to head off a congressional effort to impose its own ethical standards on the court. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Senate judiciary committee chairman, Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, have called for a law with limited rules and enforcement mechanisms.

Durbin called the Supreme Court’s toothless code, “a step in the right direction,” adding that he was concerned that, “the highest court in the land not languish with the lowest standard of ethics in our federal government.” Whitehouse said, “... a code of ethics is not binding unless there is a mechanism to investigate possible violations and enforce the rules. The honor system has not worked for members of the Roberts Court.”

The flagrant corruption among the justice of the high court is part of the degeneration of all the institutions of bourgeois rule that found its most overt expression in the presidency of the fascist Donald Trump and his attempt on January 6, 2021 to overthrow the US Constitution and remain in office by means of a mob assault on Congress.

Under the pressure of extreme wealth inequality, the pursuit of permanent imperialist wars that threaten a third world nuclear war and the growing assault on democratic rights within the US, the court has become a center of right-wing attacks on the working class.

The nine justices on the highest court in the country serve lifetime appointments, and no Supreme Court judge has ever been removed in US history. Throughout its history, the court has been a bastion of political reaction, including the defense of slavery and upholding Jim Crow segregation in the American South. 

The devolution of the Supreme Court achieved a qualitative transformation with the 5–4 decision in Bush v. Gore (2000) that halted the vote recount in Florida, stole the presidential election from Al Gore and handed it to George W. Bush, and put forward the argument that the voting public does not have the right to determine the President of the United States.

Other rulings since then that have intensified the attack on democratic rights include: Citizens United v. FEC (2010), which allowed unrestricted corporate donations in election campaigns; Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which removed the enforcement provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (2022), which abolished the constitutional right to an abortion.

UPS workers face job cuts due to automation, stagnant wages under new contract

Jane Wise

Two and a half months after the “passage” of the sell-out United Parcel Service contract, there are growing signs that cuts in jobs and wages are imminent. UPS is seeking to recoup its small cost increases under the new contract to offset decreasing volumes resulting from the ongoing recession in the shipping sector, and to accelerate the shift to automation which is a clear threat to jobs.

The contract was “ratified” as the result of carefully-orchestrated theatrics by the Teamsters union, which spent months falsely claiming it was prepared to call a national strike. In reality, the union did not even bother to make preparations to strike and constantly walked back each of its “red lines,” eventually announcing a deal at the last minute which it claimed was the product of a “credible strike threat.”

From the beginning, the contract was a sellout which falls far below workers’ demands. The new $21 per hour starting rate for part-time workers does not come close to making up for nearly four decades of declining wages, and the contract freezes increases to pension contributions in many areas of the country. It does not even secure air conditioning in vehicles for the vast majority of delivery drivers. The contract was eventually declared “ratified” under dubious circumstances, in an online balloting process with significant vulnerabilities.

However, the full extent of the betrayal is only now becoming clearer. A recent article in FreightWaves explicitly states that Teamsters general president Sean O’Brien and his negotiators understood that jobs would be lost due the company’s move to automation and to lower package volumes. Law professor and Teamsters insider Michael Duff is quoted as saying, “I believe the Teamsters, at some point, just said that ‘These [job losses] are costs we are willing to live with.’”

UPS has already begun to automate many tasks inside its facilities with the goal of reducing its 140,000 part-time workforce inside its sortation centers in the next couple of years. As recently as September 29, UPS announced it was implementing “pick-and-place” technologies to move packages onto conveyor belts for sorting, a robot to unload trailers, and driverless inside vehicles to move items that cannot be processed by automated sorting.

Speaking with FreightWaves, Alan Amling, a former UPS executive said, “As wages rise, the relative cost of technology drops. I expect you will see accelerated investments in technology that help employees become more productive, and in some cases, replace them.” Amling predicts job cuts will come from attrition as job growth at UPS shrinks close to zero in the coming years. Analysts speculate UPS will save $3 billion a year in labor costs through automation.

The new contract contains virtually no protections against job losses due to automation. It only requires UPS to notify the Teamsters forty-five days in advance of the implementation of new technologies. However, it is clear that the new automation in some sorting centers was well underway before the recent contract was put to a vote, or more likely, before negotiations began, and the union stayed quiet about this development.

As previously reported by the WSWS, this was the plan all along, according to UPS CEO Carol Tomé who stated, “[W]e can put together plans to mitigate that cost, plans to drive productivity inside of our business through automation, which, oh by the way, we retained the ability to do so.”

Refuting the claim of the historic pay increase promised by the agreement, rank-and-file UPS workers are reporting to the World Socialist Web Site that they are experiencing sharp wage cuts under the new contract. In some cases, market rate adjustments (MRA), or local wage increases beyond the contractual wage rates designed to attract enough workers in higher-cost areas, are being rescinded as the new hourly pay structure under the new contract takes effect, causing workers in larger markets to make less than they did before their “raise.”

A UPS worker with an MRA transferred over a year ago from a Pacific Northwest city to a Midwestern city told the WSWS he initially kept his MRA after moving, but after the contract ratification, it was taken away and he is making $9 an hour less.

According to UPS Chief Finance Officer Brian Newman in an interview with CNBC, the new wage rates are intended to do away with MRA’s entirely, under which many workers were already making more than the new starting rate of $21 per hour. This means that, in some cases, workers are making even less, than they did before the “raise.”

UPS began slashing jobs last summer in the face of the ongoing shipping recession brought on by the slowing demand from e-commerce and the impact of rising interest rates. Hours were cut by 10 percent and 2,500 management jobs were eliminated. In August, almost 200 senior pilots at UPS accepted buyout packages rumored to be $360,000 after UPS sought to eliminate only 167 positions out of 3400 pilots.

According to a worker at the company’s Worldport air freight hub in Louisville, Kentucky, management has warned the roughly 8,000 employees at the facility that the holiday peak season will be nearly non-existent for them this year, due to both declining volumes overall at UPS and the diversion of volumes to other air facilities. The new contract is also offering a pension bonus to anyone who retires during the life of the agreement.

The company has also eliminated the “pre-trip” position at Worldport, a less physically-demanding job typically held by higher seniority workers. While this is likely being done to pressure these older workers into retirement, these higher-seniority workers also will have the right to “bump” more junior workers from their jobs. A senior worker who is close to retirement would not only be put back into a lower-seniority job that is more physically demanding for the remainder of their career, but the displaced junior workers themselves would retain “bump” rights over worker with even less seniority.

Subsequent developments have proven correct the statement by the UPS Rank-and-File Committee, which was founded to oppose the sellout by the Teamsters bureaucracy, and which declared upon the ratification of the contract that workers “went into this contract one of the most exploited unionized workforces in the United States–and have come out the same.”

Pointing to the serious questions surrounding the integrity of the vote and the circumstances in which it was held, the committee announced a rank-and-file investigation into the contract. “An illegitimate vote can only produce an illegitimate result,” it declared. “The bureaucracy will use the result to claim there is huge support for them and this contract. But that is a lie. The whole procedure, from start to finish, was manipulated to produce the desired outcome.”