The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) published the results of the Income and Living Conditions Survey conducted in 2023 with reference to income data for 2022. It shows that over the past decade, the richest have increased their share of income at the expense of the rest of society.
Worsening social inequality, deepened by high inflation and the cost of living, is also a basis for the growth of working class struggles. Strikes and protests have taken on an explosive character in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ongoing NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and Israel's genocidal assault in Gaza.
According to the TurkStat report, the income share of the richest 20 percent of society increased from 45.9 percent in 2013 to 49.8 percent in 2022. For the lowest income 20 percent, it decreased from 6.2 to 5.9 percent. The other three income segments also experienced a decline over the 10-year period.
Chart 1: Distribution of regressions in groups of 20 percent, rows from lowest to highest [Photo: TurkStat]
According to the report, the income ratio of the richest 20 percent to the bottom 20 percent has increased from 7.4 to 8.4. When calculated in 10 percentiles, income inequality between the richest 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent has increased from 12.6 to 15 times. The Gini Coefficient, an international measure, has risen from 0.391 to 0.433.
Chart 2: The ratio of the richest 20 percent to the bottom 20 percent, and the ratio of the richest 10 percent to the bottom 10 percent, and the Gini Coefficient [Photo: TurkStat]
Even the official figures, manipulated by TurkStat and considered unreliable by most people, cannot hide the increase in inequality. There are many reasons to believe that real inequality is much higher. Moreover, the study does not include the year 2023, when capital incomes were further boosted by high interest rates and speculation, and the majority of society was crushed by the rising cost of living.
Although TurkStat has announced an inflation rate of 64 percent for 2023, there is a widespread view among the public and various experts that these figures are incomplete and distorted. The Inflation Research Group (ENAG), an independent organization, put the inflation rate for 2023 at 127 percent.
The rising cost of living has triggered a rise in working class struggles in recent years. In response, the government has put pressure on employment and wages through high interest rates. The central bank's key interest rate rose from 8.5 percent last May to 45 percent in January after eight consecutive increases. However, the trade unions play the biggest role in suppressing wages and class struggle.
In recent months, during collective bargaining, workers' determination to fight has forced the unions to call strikes. But the unions have ended the strikes with last-minute sell-out agreements that fall short of real inflation.
The 2023-2025 contract negotiations between corporations and trade unions, covering over 160,000 workers in the metal and auto industry, one of the most important sectors of the Turkish economy—failed to reach an agreement. Two unions had to take a strike decision demanded by rank-and-file workers. One day before the announced strike date, both unions signed the sales contracts, confirming WSWS’s warnings.
Although the 98 percent increase in the contract seems high, it is below the real rate of inflation and the unions' demands in the draft. Moreover, most of the wages in the metal sector were 40 percent below the poverty line set by the unions themselves. With the latest increase, the average wage in the metal industry was 30,000 TL (US$985). According to a survey by Türk-İş, the poverty line in January was 49,019 TL (US$1,610).
The continuation of the graduated wage system has resulted in workers with less seniority benefiting relatively less from wage increases. A metal worker criticized the results of the graduated wage system on X in response to the “Resistance Won” post of the Birleşik Metal-İş union: “If we had gone on strike, would we have gotten a smaller raise? I am a 2-year employee and my raise is 85%. A 10-year worker gets a 107% increase... Because his salary is higher, he gains on again.” Türk Metal closed the posts on its X account where it announced the signing of the contract to comments.
After the signing of the contract, the workers of Sarkusyan Metal shouted slogans in the lunch hall to show their hostility to the agreement and insisted on voting to continue or not the strike.
The determination of the workers to fight continues, either by forcing the unions to strike in the collective bargaining process or by wildcat strikes. Workers at the Erciyas Steel Pipe Industry in Düzce and Mersin went on strike on Wednesday, while the workers of Şahinkul Machinery in Bursa have been on strike since December 21.
The striking workers of Erciyas Steel Pipe [Photo: Birleşik Metal-İş]
Hundreds of Uluğ Enerji workers in Bursa, Çanakkale, Balıkesir and Yalova continue their strike for a second week against the meltdown of their wages in the face of inflation.
Striking Özak Tekstil workers in the southeastern city of Şanlıurfa, who are fighting for better wages and benefits after resigning from the pro-corporate trade union, continue their protests. The workers, who have been staging work stoppages and protests since November 27 despite state repression, have continued to protest, most recently in front of the company's headquarters in Istanbul and the stores of several international textile brands for which the company produces.
Public sector workers continue to protest against the cost of living in Turkey. Insisting that the official inflation rate for 2023 does not reflect reality and that their wages should be increased, public sector workers are opposed not only to the government but also the union leaders.
Defense industry workers, who are members of the Harb-İş union, and workers at the Turkish Rail Vehicle Industry Inc. (Türasaş) factories in many provinces, who are members of the Demiryol-İş union, have been demonstrating for the past month to demand additional wage increases. After their protests did not lead to any results, the workers demanded the resignation of the leaders of their union and of the Türk-İş Federation and asked them to declare all their incomes. Workers at a Türk Şeker factory in Eskisehir said, “Today, we are protesting against both Türk-İş and Şeker-İş unions. We are protesting against the unions that do not listen to the workers.”
The growing workers' protests in Turkey are part of a global movement. All over the world, different sections of the working class are expressing themselves through strikes and actions against the cost of living and unbearable living conditions. In Europe, transport workers, including train, bus and airline workers, have recently joined this wave of strikes.
Israel is preparing to expand its war from Gaza and the West Bank into southern Lebanon, with the full support of the Biden administration.
Speaking to Israeli reservists on the border with Gaza last week, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israeli troops will “very soon go into action” on the country’s northern border with Lebanon. The forces close to you, he said, “are leaving the field and moving towards the north, and preparing for what comes next.” Tens of thousands of regular troops and some 60,000 reservists are already deployed in northern Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, October 28, 2023. [AP Photo/Abir Sultan]
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the end of last year that Israel would “single-handedly turn Beirut and South Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Younis [Gaza’s second-largest city]” if Hezbollah—the bourgeois clerical group allied with Iran that has substantial support in Lebanon—launched an all-out war against Israel. He has insisted that Hezbollah moves its forces north of the Litani River. If US-led diplomatic efforts failed to achieve this by the end of January, Israel would begin expanding its attacks on Hezbollah.
Sarit Zehavi, the founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center which covers security threats in Israel’s north, told the Breaking Defence news outlet that Israel’s leadership had escalated the amount and “quality” of strikes in a bid to score a military success and damage Hezbollah’s capabilities before any diplomatic talks led to a ceasefire.
Hezbollah played a key role, along with Iran and Russia, in helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad defeat Islamist proxy forces backed by the CIA, the Gulf states, Turkey and Israel that were trying to topple his regime. Part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” that includes Hamas, Shia militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen, it supports various Palestinian factions in southern Lebanon as well as a Hamas bureau in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, a stronghold.
Israeli air raids and artillery barrage attacks inside Lebanon that have included using white phosphorous in civilian areas in violation of international humanitarian law, and Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli forces in northern Israel have taken place on a near-daily basis. But so far, Hezbollah has calibrated its actions to prevent a full-scale war with Israel, with its leader Hassan Nasrallah at pains in public pronouncements to avoid escalating the conflict. This is despite Israel’s targeted strikes last month that killed Saleh al-Arouri, a senior official of Hamas’s political bureau in Beirut and a commander within its military wing, and Wissam Tawil, a prominent Hezbollah figure and member of its elite Radwan Force.
Hassan Nasrallah giving a speech in May 2000, just after the Israeli withdrawal [Photo by Khamenei.ir / CC BY 4.0]
The bombardment has forced around 76,000 Lebanese living near the border to flee their homes. Southern Lebanon is home to a poor Shiite population and a Hezbollah stronghold. According to the UN, Israeli air strikes have damaged at least 426 rural locations, burning huge swathes of agricultural land and making it impossible for farmers to harvest their crops. More than 170 Hezbollah fighters and at least 25 civilians have killed since October 8. An estimated 80,000 Israelis have evacuated Israel’s northern towns, while nine soldiers and six civilians have been killed.
Netanyahu and Gallant’s objective is to eliminate Hezbollah as a military and political force in Lebanon, as part of its broader preparations for war against Iran. Hezbollah, with 30,000-50,000 fighters and an arsenal of attack drones, small arms, artillery, tanks and precision-guided missiles is a far more significant military opponent than Hamas.
With its Shi’ite and Palestinian allies, Hezbollah constitutes the largest bloc in Lebanon’s confessional-based and fragmented political system, drawing support from the impoverished masses ruined by the looting of the country’s wealth by the handful of billionaires that have run the country since the end of the civil war in 1990, including Riad Salameh who for three decades ran Lebanon’s central bank and is wanted by several European countries on charges of siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars and money laundering. The Lebanese lira has lost more than 98 percent of its value since 2019, with its black-market rate reaching up to 140,000 to the US dollar in mid-March, leading to the world's highest food price inflation. Between February 2022 and 2023, Lebanon witnessed a 261 percent increase in prices, following years of triple digit inflation.
A Lebanese protester holds an Arabic placard that reads: “Down with the rule of the bank,” in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Feb. 26, 2021.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Eradicating Hezbollah means eliminating all mass opposition to Israel and US domination of this small state, carved out of Greater Syria by France after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and home to six million people. This is the Biden administration’s opening move, with Israel as its stalking horse, of its broader offensive aimed at driving Iran, its allied militias and Russia out of Syria prior to launching a full-scale war on Tehran as a critical component of its existential struggle with Russia and China.
The imperialist powers, beset by massive internal social contradictions, are also attempting to channel these internal tensions outward, toward an external enemy. These wars provide the basis for continuous attacks on democratic rights and the outlawing of domestic political opposition.
The US has led talks, along with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar and France, with some of the fascistic Christian and Sunni factions and armed forces in Lebanon in a bid to strengthen their hand against Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which is also part of the government. Their aims are to shore up support for Israel, force Hezbollah to agree the choice of a Lebanese president acceptable to the participants and remove Hezbollah's forces from southern Lebanon.
The country has been without a president since Michel Aoun left office at the end of his term in October 2022. This has paralysed Lebanon’s caretaker government headed by the country’s richest man Najib Mikati, who was unable to cobble together a government after the May 2022 elections. He has no power to pass legislation or a budget even as the country has defaulted on its international loans, much less agree to the “economic reforms” demanded by the International Monetary Fund and international banks in return for a restructuring of its debts.
Najib Mikati at the World Economic Forum, 2013 [Photo by World Economic Forum from Cologny, Switzerland - Transformations in the Arab World: Najib Mikati/Uploaded by January / CC BY-SA 2.0]
US envoy Amos Hochstein, who was born in Israel and served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as a tank crewman, is expected to return to Beirut in an effort to force Hezbollah withdraw its fighters 18 miles north of the border with Israel to the far side of the Litani River. However, Lebanon has insisted in return that Israel withdraws from occupied Lebanese lands—there are 13 disputed areas along the Israel, Lebanon and Syra border—and stops its violations of Lebanese sovereignty.
Israel’s war on Lebanon is aimed at pushing through the political restructuring of the country, suppressing the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiments of Lebanese workers and peasants, more than 80 percent of whom live in poverty, and strengthening the power of right-wing, pro-US forces such as the Christian Phalange and Lebanese Forces and the Sunni parties within the anti-Syrian/pro-Saudi Arabia March 14 Alliance.
With the coming to power of the most far-right, militarist wing of the Zionist factions in the November 2022 elections, Israel has rejected all efforts at political solutions, preferring military force to achieve its longstanding objectives of expanding the territories under its control and eradicating all obstacles in its path. This marries up with the Biden administration’s preparations for a future military intervention against Iran.
US and Israeli interventions in Lebanon
Israel has long sought to transform Lebanon into a virtual protectorate, with David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister keen to support the establishment of a Christian state in Lebanon. Such was the longstanding alignment of the right-wing Maronite parties with the Zionists that they only briefly sent a token force in the 1948 Arab Israeli war in support of the Palestinians.
After the 1967 Arab Israeli war, in which Lebanon did not take part, and Yasser Arafat and his Fatah movement’s assumption of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, the PLO began conducting raids from Lebanon into Israel and took control of the country’s Palestinian refugee camps. Israel retaliated with raids against Lebanese villages to incite the Lebanese people against the PLO. This intensified after the PLO, which had been driven out of Jordan with Israel’s help in 1970, moved its base to Lebanon.
Yasser Arafat in 1997 [Photo by Government Press Office (Israel) / CC BY-SA 3.0]
Apart from its commitment to armed struggle in pursuit of democratic and secular nationhood, the PLO articulated no political or social programme for the Palestinian and Lebanese workers and peasants and sought support not from the international working class but from the bourgeois Arab regimes that repeatedly betrayed the Palestinians. While the PLO was a genuinely popular movement and contained within its ranks diverse social tendencies, its bourgeois programme could never overcome the political impasse into which the Palestinian masses had been led by the perfidy of the Arab regimes upon which it depended.
Using the opportunity created by the 1978 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt—the most important Arab country—Israel set about creating a new order in the Middle East by invading Lebanon. Its aim was the destruction of the PLO leadership and the permanent economic integration of the Occupied Territories into Israel, while destroying Syria’s power in the region and establishing a right-wing Christian government in Lebanon.
In March 1978, during the Lebanese civil war, Israel sent military forces across the border justifying its actions as a response to PLO terrorist activity. Though compelled by international pressure to withdraw after its military operations had resulted in more than 2,000 Lebanese deaths, Israel maintained control of a 12-mile strip north of the border by sponsoring a right-wing militia, dubbed the South Lebanon Army, under the proxy leadership of Major Saad Haddad.
Four years later, in 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his defense minister, Ariel Sharon, set into motion a more ambitious plan to take political control of all Lebanon and expel the PLO from the country. Once again, a pretext was found when an Israeli ambassador was wounded in London by a Palestinian assassin in June 1982. Though intelligence experts acknowledged that the PLO had nothing to do with this incident, the Begin government invaded Lebanon. In an operation titled “Peace for Galilee,” Israeli troops swept north toward the outskirts of Beirut, which was subjected to protracted bombing. The war forced the PLO’s expulsion from Lebanon and led to the Israeli-sanctioned slaughter of 3,500 Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp in 1982 by Lebanese fascist militiamen.
Aftermath of massacre of Palestinians directed by Lebanese Forces with the complicity of senior members of the Israeli Cabinet and Defence Forces and conducted by Christian Phalangists and members of the South Lebanon Army in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. [Photo: Robin Moyer, USA, Black Star for Time. Beirut, Lebanon, 18 September 1982. ]
The United States became involved in the subjugation of Lebanon, with the Reagan administration stationing Marines in Beirut. US participation in attacks on the poorer neighborhoods of Beirut (which were shelled by American naval vessels) created deep hostility, leading to the 1983 suicide bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people, including 52 Lebanese and embassy employees. A month later two truck bombs struck at American marines, killing 307 people. Shortly after, the Reagan administration decided to cut its losses and withdraw from Lebanon.
The rise of Hezbollah as a political and military force
The Israeli regime sought to maintain control over substantial portions of south Lebanon. It was out of the popular resistance to the occupation that Hezbollah emerged as a military and political force. The guerrilla war conducted by Hezbollah eventually forced Israel to withdraw its forces in 2000, although cross-border attacks continued.
For Israel’s ruling elite, Hezbollah and Lebanon are unfinished business. Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” was formed in the 1980s as an “Islamic Resistance” dedicated to armed struggle against Israel, amid Israel’s occupation of Lebanon during the 1975-90 civil war that served as a proxy war for the competing regional powers, France, Israel and the US. It was supported by Syria and Iran’s clerical regime that came to power following the 1979 Iranian revolution that overthrew the hated US-backed Shah Reza Pahlevi dictatorship. Within Lebanon, it drew its support from the Shiite masses, historically one of the poorest and most neglected communities that were discriminated against by the dominant Christian, Sunni and Druze factions.
Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, May 2023 [Photo by Tasnim News Agency / CC BY 4.0]
It called for the expulsion of US, French and allied interests from Lebanon and restraints on the power of their vassals—some of the Christian parties—and mounted a guerilla campaign against the US and Israel. Using funding from Lebanese business groups and bourgeois figures, the Lebanese diaspora and monies from Iran and Syria, it also provided vital welfare services for the Shiites, who did not have access to the same facilities and social infrastructure as the other religious groups. It combined this with the advocacy of corporatism and paternalism as a counterweight to the class struggle.
This reactionary ideology, combining as it does religious obscurantism with the armed struggle, offers no way forward for the Lebanese masses. Hezbollah was only able to rise to prominence due to the failure of secular Arab bourgeois nationalism and the stifling by Stalinism and its ideological offshoots of a genuinely socialist political alternative for the working class.
Hezbollah’s influence grew, especially after the Taif Accords brought Lebanon’s civil war to an end in 1990 under Syria’s tutelage. It was to eradicate Syria’s domination of Lebanon that the US organized the 2005 Cedar Revolution, based on Maronite Christian forces and other Lebanese parties aligned with Washington, Saudi Arabia and France.
Demonstrations in Lebanon triggered by the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on February 14, 2005 [Photo by Elie Ghobeira / CC BY-SA 3.0]
The Bush administration used the assassination of the former prime minister Rafic Hariri in February 2005, which it accused Syria of orchestrating, to engineer the removal of the Syrian troops that had occupied the country since 1976 and to form a pro-US government. It designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, long after the group had ceased its kidnapping and assassination of US citizens following the US withdrawal from Lebanon in 1984. Such was the strength of the Hezbollah counter-demonstrations that the new government was obliged to include Hezbollah or its nominees in its cabinet, a situation that has continued to this day.
Israel declared war against Lebanon in July 2006 to try and reverse the limited results of the Cedar Revolution. Despite two years of preparations and the massive use of firepower that destroyed much of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and killed 1,200 Lebanese compared with just 160 Israelis, Israel was unable to achieve its declared aims of freeing two captured soldiers and stopping Hezbollah from firing rockets into Israel let alone its real objectives: the elimination of Hezbollah as a fighting and political force within Lebanon, the reduction of Lebanon into a vassal of the United States and Israel, and ultimately regime change in Syria and Iran.
Hezbollah was able to mobilise widespread support for the war among the most oppressed sections of the Lebanese population, making it impossible for the IDF to advance or halt the retaliatory bombardment of towns in northern Israel. After a month of war, Israel and the Bush administration were forced to accept a UN Security Council-backed ceasefire that was widely seen as a debacle for Israel.
US war plans in the region
Israel’s threats against Lebanon come as the US and the UK have struck over 100 Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force and Iranian-backed militia targets in Iraq, Syria and Yemen since February 2.
The US has targeted operations and intelligence centers, rockets, missiles, drone storage facilities, and “logistics and munition supply chain facilities” of the IRGC and Iranian-backed militia groups.
Israeli soldiers fire a mobile howitzer in the north of Israel, near the border with Lebanon, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. [AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg]
These strikes follow the earlier spate of attacks by the US and the UK on Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world that has been subject to a devastating war by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, aided and abetted by Washington and London, aimed at re-imposing Riyadh’s protégé on the country after he was ousted by the Houthis in 2014. In December, the Biden administration announced the start of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval operation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden targeting the Houthi in Yemen. It sent an armada of nearly 20 warships to the Middle East, led by two aircraft carrier battle groups.
This is a de facto war against Iran to eliminate Iran’s military allies throughout the Middle East, encircle it and provoke retaliatory action against US forces that can be used to justify a full-scale war against Tehran.
The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and other warships crosses the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf on Sunday, Nov. 26, 2023, as part of a wider American deployment in the Middle East. [AP Photo/Information Technician Second Class Ruskin Naval/U.S. Navy ]
Last September, the US State Department diverted $85 million aid from Egypt, with $55 million bound for Taiwan and $30 million for Lebanon’s armed forces, saying it is “critical” to support Lebanese armed forces that “assumed responsibilities beyond its normal remit due to security challenges stemming from the compounding crises facing the country.” The US army is already involved in helping the reconstruction of Lebanon’s Naval Base damaged in the devastating Beirut port explosion in August 2020.
Lest anyone doubt Washington’s intentions, it instructive to note that it is building the US’s second largest embassy in tiny Lebanon.
Located about eight miles from downtown Beirut and occupying a 43-acre site, the new compound with a reported cost of $1.2 billion looks like a city, with an airport, entertainment venues, consulate buildings and residential units. Its declared purpose to counter the “Axis of Resistance,” like the “Global War on Terror,” is a euphemism for the US’s plans to control the region.
The president of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) released a statement last month calling for urgent action by Parliament and the provinces to address the overcrowding crisis in the country’s hospital emergency rooms.
The CMA statement warned that a flood of patients suffering from viral infections was intersecting with staff and material shortages that were the outcome of decades of underfunding to produce overwhelmed emergency services at health care institutions throughout the country, and that this would persist without “major systemic changes.”
According to Dr. Kathleen Ross, who heads the association of 70,000 physicians and medical learners, “Staff shortages and hospital overcrowding combined with poor access to high-quality team-based primary care are leaving hospital emergency departments woefully under-resourced for the avalanche of patients with influenza, COVID-19 or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) at this time of year.”
Some 200,000 Quebec health care workers participated in a wave of strikes at the end of last year, only to have the Common Front inter-union alliance reach sell-out agreements with the provincial CAQ government. Pictured here workers picketing CHUM, Montreal's largest hospital.
She noted that patients are waiting 20 or more hours to receive care. This was most recently exemplified by the case of 17-year-old Angelina Malott, who had to wait 19 hours and seek treatment at two hospitals in Kitchener, Ontario in January for appendicitis. “This felt so backwards because the resources were right there, but we couldn't get to them. We couldn't do what needed to be done,” her mother Julia Malott told CTV News.
In December two patients died while waiting for care in the ER of the Anna-Laberge Hospital in Châteauguay south of Montreal. The death of 37-year-old mother Allison Holthoff after waiting seven hours in extreme pain without care in a Nova Scotia emergency room sparked widespread outrage last year.
Ross stressed that without a focus on improving access to high quality primary care for Canadians the health care system and those who work in it would “continue to endure endless cycles of deterioration.” A 2023 survey by the OurCare initiative found that approximately 6.5 million people, or 1 in 6 Canadians, did not have a primary care physician who they saw for regular checkups. And accounting for those who reported being unable to make an appointment with their family doctor, the CMA reports about half of Canadians do not have ready access to a physician. Consequently, among a broad swathe of the population—and for no fault of their own—common medical conditions are left to fester untreated, leaving many no choice but to turn to emergency rooms for care when their symptoms become acute.
What Ross’s letter does not explain is that Canada’s health system has been in crisis for decades due above all to systematic defunding by successive governments. The current New Democratic Party-backed Liberal government headed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has, in health care as in many other areas, continued and intensified the austerity policies of its Conservative predecessor.
When population growth and aging are taken into account, the Trudeau government has imposed real spending cuts on health transfers from the federal government to the provinces during its eight plus years in office. A $46.2 billion deal reached last year with the provinces will only increase the federal share of healthcare funding from 22 percent to 24 percent, well below the 50-50 split which prevailed at the birth of the country’s public health care system, Medicare, in the late 1960s.
Trudeau’s attack on health care funding is part of his government’s big business agenda which is aimed at advancing Canadian capitalism’s global “competitive” position and predatory interests on the world stage at the expense of working people. The Trudeau government is determined to make workers pay for the hundreds of billions handed to big business and the banks during the pandemic, a massive program of military rearmament and the waging of war against Russia.
The trade union bureaucracy, which serves as a key pillar of support for Trudeau’s pro-war, pro-austerity government, was intimately involved in crafting last year’s health care funding settlement. In a statement released just days before Trudeau unveiled the final agreement, Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske enthused over a “productive and constructive meeting with Minister [of Health Jean-Yves] DuClos.” Bruske concluded by urging Trudeau and the premiers to “rise to the challenge” of the health care crisis.
While claiming to be opposed to the privatization of health care, the union leaderships have worked tirelessly to block any genuine struggle against privatization by health care workers. Instead, they have collaborated with provincial governments across the country to impose one sellout deal after another, as shown by the ongoing sabotage of the public sector workers’ struggle in Quebec. At the federal and provincial levels, the unions worked closely with the respective governments to enforce the “back-to-work” campaign during the early stages of the pandemic, overwhelming the health care system and killing thousands.
The health care crisis has been deepened by the profits-before-life approach to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which has been adopted at every level of government, resulting in millions of infections and nearly 58,000 official deaths. Life expectancy fell for three years in a row between 2020 and 2022 in Canada, with COVID being the third leading cause of death. Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, hospitals have been repeatedly overwhelmed by waves of illness and a “tripledemic” of COVID, flu and RSV.
The crush of patients combined with underfunding has contributed to a surge in burnout among healthcare workers and the closure of emergency rooms due to staff shortages. According to the Ontario Health Coalition emergency rooms and emergency centres in Ontario closed 1,199 times in 2023 due to a lack of staff.
The growing crisis in Canada’s health care system has been used by all provincial governments to justify further privatization. The funneling of an ever greater share of public funds into private coffers has been justified with the lie that this will reduce wait times for basic care and medical procedures.
In fact, as health experts have warned and various studies have demonstrated, the profusion of private for-profit health care clinics has only served to draw personnel and government funding away from the public system, exacerbating staff shortages and lengthening waitlists for urgently needed, even lifesaving, procedures.
While private services have long been a part of Canada’s health care system, with eye, dental, mental health care and prescriptions entirely or largely excluded from the “universal” Medicare system, privatization has picked up pace in recent years at the behest of corporate interests. Nearly one third of health care is now paid for by patients out of pocket or through insurance plans offered by their employers.
In Ontario, the government of Tory Premier Doug Ford has approved the expansion of services which can be provided by privately-owned clinics from cataract surgery and MRIs to include hip and knee replacements. The authorization of private clinics to offer surgeries began in January 2022, with Ford presenting it as a means of easing pressure on the province’s hospitals. Such “private” clinics are receiving millions of dollars in public funds to perform surgeries. An investigation by CBC News found that a private clinic in Toronto was receiving more than twice the public funds for procedures covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Program than public hospitals.
Quebec’s right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government adopted legislation late year last (Bill 15) which places the province’s entire public health care system—including hospitals, nursing homes, and community health clinics (CLSCs)—under a new agency, Santé Québec. The agency will be led by corporate “top guns” and charged with boosting the “efficiency” of the health care system through introducing “market” norms and outright privatization. The province also allows fully private clinics, which provide services to those who can afford to pay thousands of dollars per year out of pocket, for family care and surgeries like hip replacements.
Meanwhile, the hard-right, anti-public health government of United Conservative Party Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has outlined a sweeping plan to smash up the province’s health system. A plan to split Alberta Health Services into four separate agencies will open up a further $17 billion in government funding for corporate pillaging.
Successive New Democratic Party governments in British Columbia have given hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts every year to private surgical clinics, building on a policy initiated by the provincial Liberals.
One of Canada’s largest telecommunications monopolies, Telus, has gotten into the lucrative health care game in recent years. It offers “telehealth,” pharmacies and private clinics in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador through its subsidiary Telus Health. The company also operates in the US, UK and Australia. The subsidiary reported revenue of $422 million in the third quarter of 2023.
Despite the crisis in the health care system, Medicare remains overwhelmingly popular among Canadian workers with privatization long treated as a political third rail. While they and their corporate taskmasters salivate at the billions to be made, all of the bourgeois parties know that outright privatization would spark mass outrage, hence the gradual privatization and death through a thousand cuts for public health services. This has been the preferred strategy enforced by all political parties when in office from the Conservatives, Liberals and Parti Québécois to the NDP in partnership with the nationalist and pro-capitalist trade unions.
The 2024 federal budget, passed in the Bundestag (parliament) on Friday with the votes of the three coalition parties—Social Democrats (SPD), Liberal Democrats (FPD) and Greens—is a declaration of war on working people. It includes the highest military expenditure since the end of the Second World War. On the other hand, it includes compliance with the debt brake and massive cuts in the areas of healthcare, education, and social welfare.
Officially, Germany will spend around €72 billion on defence this year. Of this, €51.95 billion is accounted for by the regular defence budget. A further €20 billion or so will come from the €100 billion “Bundeswehr Special Fund” for the Armed Forces, which was approved by the Bundestag and Bundesrat (upper chamber) in June 2022. Considering additional military expenditure hidden in other budget items and funds, defence spending for 2024 will amount to a total of €85.5 billion. This means it has more than doubled since 2017.
[Photo: Max Linhof/WSWS]
In the Bundestag, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) boasted about the record spending. “The time has come!” he shouted to the assembled deputies. Ten years ago, “we promised to finally halt the decline in defence spending and try to get closer to 2 percent of gross domestic product within a decade.” With the 2024 budget, a NATO quota of 2.1 percent will now be achieved for the first time in decades. The “around €72 billion for our armed forces” budgeted in Section 14 and the “Bundeswehr Special Fund” combine to make the “highest figure since the Bundeswehr was founded.”
At the same time, Pistorius made it clear that this is just the beginning. “We must prepare ourselves for the fact that the Bundeswehr’s financial requirements will increase permanently,” he explained. Security “does not come for free—not today and certainly not in a few years’ time.” The Special Fund was therefore only an “important first step,” but a “reliable, sustainable and increasing budget” was necessary.
The increase that is being prepared behind the scenes is gigantic. According to a report in newsweekly Der Spiegel, the planners at the Ministry of Defence assume that “in 2028, two percent of economic output will correspond to around €97 billion.” The Bundeswehr will need this sum “in any case, for example, for operating expenses, maintenance and new acquisitions.” In addition, the planners have estimated “a further €10.8 billion for foreseeable further requirements of the troops.” This means that the Bundeswehr was heading for a “€56 billion hole” with the expiry of the Special Fund.
These massive amounts serve a single purpose: to re-equip Germany as a major military power. In the Bundestag, Pistorius boasted about the “major armaments projects” that the coalition government has already launched “in this legislative period:” F-35 fighter jets, new-generation snowmobile vehicles, equipment for the “infantryman of the future,” Puma infantry fighting vehicles, CH-47 heavy transport helicopters and further maritime reconnaissance aircraft. In addition, a government purchase agreement had been concluded with Israel for the procurement of the Arrow air defence system and guided missiles, Pistorius said.
To drive forward and accelerate the necessary armament, it was now important that “all elements of the procurement chain work together: from the troops to industry.” It was also clear that the security and defence industry needs to ramp up its production capacities, he continued. Because one thing was certain: “The ‘new era’ will be with us for a long time to come. And we can only take this path together: politically, socially and economically.” The budget was “a clear sign that we are taking shaping the turnaround very, very seriously.”
Workers and young people must take such statements as a warning. The German ruling class, which already fought two world wars in the 20th century and committed terrible crimes, is preparing for a potentially all-destroying third world war. Just a few days before his appearance in the Bundestag, Pistorius had declared that Germany and Europe would have to prepare for a war with the nuclear power Russia in “a period of five to eight years.”
In the budget debate, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) made it unmistakably clear that Berlin would not abandon its declared NATO goal of defeating Russia militarily in Ukraine. “We will make our major contribution for this year, and we will do everything we can to ensure that Europe’s joint contribution is so great that Ukraine can build on it and that Putin cannot expect our support to diminish at any time,” he declared on Wednesday.
Just one day later, at a special summit in Brussels, the EU decided to continue financing and fueling the war against Russia with an additional €50 billion for Kiev. This is in addition to the support provided by individual EU member states. German military aid for Ukraine alone is expected to total around €7.4 billion this year, more than doubling the amount.
In his speech, Pistorius made clear that German imperialism was not just concerned with Ukraine and Russia, but with a global war offensive. “We are currently confronted with a multitude of security upheavals and conflicts worldwide, whether in Israel, Yemen, Syria, the Balkans, the Caucasus or the Indo-Pacific,” said the defence minister. “We must therefore also be able to take a stand in other parts of the world with our tried and tested measures consisting of diplomacy and development cooperation, but also militarily if necessary.”
To make Germany “fit for war” again (Pistorius), the ruling class is preparing to reintroduce compulsory military service. Ensuring “operational readiness” involved “reviewing our personnel requirements and, of course, the question of whether or not general compulsory service or conscription makes sense,” Pistorius said. From a societal viewpoint, “we have to ask ourselves who should defend this country when things get serious.”
The budget aims to pass on the costs of this monstrous pro-war policy to the working class. The healthcare budget alone will fall from €24.48 billion in 2023 to €16.71 billion. In 2022, it still stood at €64.4 billion. The massive cuts are the result of the government’s “profits before lives” policy in the coronavirus pandemic. Almost all the funds that have since been made available to fight the pandemic have been cancelled again—even though COVID is still raging through the population.
And the cuts go far beyond the expenditure associated with COVID-19. For example, the federal subsidy for long-term-care insurance, which previously amounted to one billion euros, has been cancelled. In future, it will have to be financed by higher employee contributions, which will hit low-income earners particularly hard.
The cuts are also huge in other areas: €1.5 billion will be saved directly in social spending, including €600 million in the subsidy for statutory pension insurance.
The coalition’s only new social policy promise, basic child protection, had already been de facto cancelled by the government at its cabinet retreat in Meseberg last summer. The €12 billion originally promised by Green Family Minister Lisa Paus was cut to €2.4 billion.
Following the Supreme Court ruling overturning the climate fund in November, the coalition government massively tightened the cuts once again with the so-called “package for future-proof finances, social security and future investments.” These are just some of the key figures:
· Spending on the Climate and Transformation Fund will be cut by €12.7 billion for 2024.
· The budget of the Ministry of Transport will be cut by €380 million.
· The budget of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research will be reduced by €200 million.
· Subsidies for motor vehicle tax for forestry and agriculture totaling €480 million and for agricultural diesel (€440 million) will be gradually abolished.
· The citizens’ income bonus of €250 million will be cancelled and the amount for citizens’ income will be reduced. Among other things, this is intended to force alleged “total refuseniks” to accept any job, no matter how nasty, for a pittance.
· Refugees who cannot be deported are to be forced into low-paid work through “sanctions for breaches of duty,” with the aim of saving social benefits totaling €500 million.
The government’s pro-war policy and the associated massive attacks on social and democratic rights will further fuel the class struggle. The year has already begun with massive farmers’ protests, strikes by train drivers, airport workers and public transit employees. Added to this are demonstrations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which is fully supported by the government and opposition parties, and the mass protests against the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The far-right party is being deliberately built up by the ruling class to push through its programme of world war and social austerity.
With less than two weeks remaining before the 2024 Indonesian presidential elections, each of the three candidates has presented their foreign policy, especially regarding the escalating confrontation between the United States and China.
Presidential candidates, from left, Ganjar Pranowo, Prabowo Subianto and Anies Baswedan holds hands as they pose for photographers after the first presidential candidates' debate in Jakarta, Indonesia, Tuesday, December 12, 2023. [AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana]
In a televised presidential debate on January 7, the candidates elaborated their programs for international relations, defence expenditure and tensions with China in the South China Sea.
The outgoing government of President Joko Widodo, who has held office for two terms since 2014, was characterised by a heightened development of business relations with China. Widodo attracted Chinese investment for infrastructure projects, green energy transition, the development of a new capital city and the country’s nickel mining industry. China is Indonesia’s largest trading partner and investor, with imports rising from under $US40 billion in 2014 to over $71 billion in 2022.
At the same time, Widodo, in the past two years, has overseen Indonesia’s participation in major joint military exercises with the US, called Garuda Shield, involving other imperialist powers such as Britain, France, Japan, Australia and Canada. Moreover, Widodo met with US President Joe Biden in Washington last November when the two leaders agreed to elevate their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the highest level of diplomatic cooperation.
During last month’s presidential debate, all three candidates indicated a tilt away from economic dependence on China and the boosting of military spending to assert Indonesia’s claims in the South China Sea. While not explicit, this orientation would imply closer relations with US imperialism.
They also expressed their commitment to continue Widodo’s promotion of economic relations with China while expanding Indonesia’s military presence in the region amid rising geo-political tensions throughout the region.
Prabowo Subianto, who served as Widodo’s top defence minister and is currently leading in polls, said disputes in the South China Sea underline the need for a strong defence force, increased platforms for military patrols and additional satellites in the region.
In his opening remarks, Prabowo reiterated Indonesia’s longstanding policy of non-alignment, or bebas aktif (“free and active”) as it is known, which is enshrined in the country’s constitution. He rejected the notion that Indonesia would take sides or join any security bloc.
Nevertheless, Prabowo’s remarks indicate a certain shift towards Washington. Despite pledging to continue Widodo’s cultivation of Chinese investment, Prabowo indirectly criticised Beijing saying: “We understand our country is very huge and rich; hundreds of years ago, countries from far away came to this archipelago to intervene and pit us against each other, to fight and to steal our wealth until we became independent. And now we have to deal with our natural wealth being taken cheaply.”
Prabowo, a notorious general in the Suharto military dictatorship, declared he was “determined to have a strong defence system” to meet the geopolitical challenges in the coming period. He promised to expand military spending, without providing an exact figure, and modernise military equipment if elected on February 14.
He directly linked the building of Indonesia’s military capability to territorial disputes with China around the Natuna Islands in the South China Sea. In recent years, Chinese fishing vessels have operated in waters Indonesia considers part of its exclusive economic zone around these islands, parts of which Beijing also claims. Prabowo stated that China’s maritime claims are inconsistent with international law.
At the same time, Prabowo indicated that he was open to Indonesia joining BRICS economic group of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Significantly, the Widodo administration declined an invitation last year to join BRICS due to concerns that Indonesia might be seen as openly aligning with Russia and China against the United States.
Over the course of the debate, the other two candidates—Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo—both attacked Prabowo as defence minister for being insufficiently aggressive in building Indonesia’s presence in the region. They presented themselves as better suited to building up the military and asserting Indonesia’s interests in the South China Sea.
Anies, the former governor of Jakarta, criticised the defence ministry’s decision to purchase 12 second-hand Mirage fighter jets from Qatar. He pledged to modernise military equipment and improve soldiers’ official residences.
However, the most concrete proposals for boosting military spending came from the third candidate, Ganjar, the representative of Widodo’s PDI-P party, who has pitched himself as a “progressive” committed to addressing the plight of ordinary Indonesians.
Ganjar said he would seek to more than double Indonesia’s defence budget, from the current 0.78 percent of the nation’s GDP up to as much as 2 percent. This massive increase in military spending will inevitably come at the expense of social programs, hitting the poorest layers of the population that he falsely claims to want to help.
Ganjar said he would prioritise Indonesia’s naval capability, developing weaponry and resupplying patrol ships. As reported by Antara, he spoke of “the need to strengthen our patrolling capacity in the South China Sea. To that end, we need to provide accessible logistics to the Indonesian Navy through tankers.”
“No attack will come overland as Indonesia is an archipelago. Thus, the sea must be fortified,” he went on. He referred to private conversations with figures in the Navy in which they demanded greater sensor technology and sonars to guard from seaborne attack. If elected, Ganjar would also allow defence industries to build more tanks, helicopters, submarines and enhance cyber technology.
On conflict in the South China Sea, Ganjar proposed to push for “temporary agreements” between Indonesia and China “with the aim of avoiding unwanted events,” without elaborating what that would amount to or how it would be possible.
Referring obliquely to the dangerous tensions across the Taiwan Strait deliberately inflamed by Washington, he warned: “Equipment modernisation in China will be completed by 2027; by then it will be strong [about enforcing] its one-China policy … Then there will be other conflicts that we can be affected by.”
Most provocatively, Ganjar declared his intention to begin exploiting gas reserves in the North Natuna Sea, that is, in waters which Beijing claims as its own maritime territory.
In other election forums, Ganjar has confirmed he would continue fostering economic relations with China established under Widodo, including investment cooperation and the “downstreaming” policy of domestically processing minerals. However, in opposition to Prabowo, Ganjar, as well as Anies, he hinted at their preference to diversify economic partnerships to reduce its dependency on China.
Political analysts have noted Anies’s history of strong relations with Western countries dating from his time as Jakarta governor. At a Jakarta forum last November of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading US think tank, Anies said he would be more inclined to encourage co-operation with countries in the European Union and East Asia than with China.
Anies promised to move away from Widodo’s foreign policy which he criticised as “transactional”—a reference to Indonesia’s economic dependence on China. Experts have said it is likely he would re-evaluate several of Widodo’s infrastructure projects, including the new capital city, financed by China.
Instead, he has put forward a “values-based” policy based on deepening engagement with institutions like ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Anies said his government would lead ASEAN to play a bigger role in resolving the South China Sea disputes.
During the campaign, Anies has also argued Indonesia should take a stronger position on the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. This was an indirect criticism of Widodo who has not condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
