Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis, the crisis of the British monarchy and the politics of diversion

Laura Tiernan

The blanket media coverage and public fascination over the absence of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, from public duties since she underwent abdominal surgery in January has barely abated after the March 22 video announcement that she is undergoing “preventive” chemotherapy treatment for cancer.

Her two-minute address, watched by millions, dominated news, online and print media in Britain for days.

Video screenshot from the March 22 statement by Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales [Photo: The Prince and Princess of Wales/X]

Since January 17, when Kensington Palace issued a statement revealing the princess had been admitted to hospital for surgery and would be absent from royal duties until after Easter, media speculation had mounted. Gastrointestinal surgeons were invited by news anchors to offer possible diagnoses, while conspiracy theories on X, Tik Tok and Facebook exploded.

Buckingham Palace’s January 17 announcement that King Charles was seeking treatment for an enlarged prostate, followed by news just weeks later that the 75-year-old monarch has cancer, plunged Britain’s monarchy into a full-blown crisis.

So tenuous has the connection between the Royal Family and that manufactured entity known as “the British public” become that when Prince William hastily withdrew from a memorial service for his Godfather, King Constantine of Greece, citing “personal reasons”, few believed statements from the palace that there was nothing to see.

Social media posts linking William’s absence to the death of Thomas Kingston—the son-in-law of Prince Michael of Kent, formerly involved with Kate’s sister Pippa Middleton—were widely discussed (the 45-year-old financier was found dead with a gunshot wound on February 25). Rumours of an affair, a royal divorce and even domestic violence circulated.

When Kensington Palace acted to quell rumours, releasing a photograph on Mothers’ Day of the princess with her children, it backfired spectacularly. Social media commentators showed how the image had been altered, and news agencies withdrew the photo from circulation, with Middleton forced to issue an apology.

After Middleton’s video last Friday, the wilder conspiracy theories have been laid to rest but her illness alongside that of the king has underscored a sense of crisis for Britain’s slimmed-down monarchy following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

Since mid-January, Charles’s public ceremonial duties have been performed by Queen Camilla. But the consort, not known for her work ethic, announced she would be taking a week-long break at the start of March, with scrutiny falling on the few remaining royals able legally to act in place of the king: his sister Anne the princess royal, aged 73, and their younger brother Prince Edward Duke of Edinburgh—who is being hailed, desperately, as “the Royals’ leading man” (Time Magazine, Tatler, Telegraph).

Commentary in the British press has underscored the nervousness of the ruling class. The New Statesman’s March 22 headline, “Kate Middleton and the sickness of a nation” described “locust years at the House of Windsor”, observing, “Royalty truly is a mirror of the nation. Part-collapsed, sickened, dragged through the mud… Not a consecrated symbol any longer. But an accurate one.”

Political commentator Andrew Marr described a “smaller and frailer royal family than Britain is used to,” noting, “The late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh produced a decades-long outward show of imperturbability and stability. How quickly it has collapsed.”

Politico identified “Britain’s royal vacuum”, describing how the absence of senior royals was causing headaches for the Sunak government in an election year, and citing a former government aide that “Particularly for Tory voters, part of feeling good about the country, and the direction of the country, is having stability in the royal household.”

The royal family is currently bracing for next week’s Netflix drama Scoop, depicting Prince Andrew’s toe-curling Newsnight interview about his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. So toxic are relations within this divided family that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan reportedly found out about Middleton’s diagnosis at the same time as the public, via the princess’s video release.

Of the coronation of King Charles III in May 2023, the World Socialist Web Site commented, “Far from offering the chance for a renewal of the monarchy, restoring its popularity, the coronation will confirm the decline in support for this rotten institution, especially among the younger generation, marking its terminal crisis.”

King Charles III, at the time the Prince of Wales, reading the speech on behalf of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. [Photo by Annabel Moeller / CC BY 2.0]

After the Queen’s death on September 8, 2022, the WSWS noted, “the earnest hope of the ruling class is that Charles’ time on the throne is short so that the carefully groomed and prepared Prince William can have a chance to restore a much-reduced monarchy’s public standing.”

Even this hope has been battered by what the New Statesman described as “reputation-shredding social media rumours” that have altered perceptions of the prince, especially after the embarrassing revelations about his character in Harry’s tell-tale memoir Spare.

But the monarchy in turmoil still plays a critical role. At a time of acute political crisis for the British bourgeoisie, with mass demonstrations against the Tory government and Labour’s backing for the Gaza genocide, the royal family has again proved its usefulness in distracting and degrading political and cultural life.

As far as the British media is concerned, Israel’s genocide in Gaza and NATO’s war against Russia that threatens the nuclear annihilation of humanity pales beside the personal woes and misfortunes of the royal family. Media obsession with Middleton’s whereabouts and her cancer scare served to push aside (and last week obliterate) virtually everything beyond the bounds of Clarence House and Windsor Estate.

Middleton and King Charles III are among 393,000 people diagnosed with cancer in the UK every year—one every 90 seconds. While the royals are receiving the best treatment money can buy, tens of thousands are forced to take their chances in a National Health Service starved of resources through decades of budget cuts and outright looting by the financial oligarchy.

Cancer survival rates in Britain are lagging 15 years behind other major nations, with thousands of patients denied life-saving chemotherapy and radiation treatment, according to research by University of College London published February. 167,000 people die from cancer in the UK each year, 460 people on average every day.

In 2023, waiting times for cancer treatment were the worst on record, with just 64.1 percent of patients starting treatment within 62 days of cancer being suspected, according to NHS data analysed by the BBC. Macmillan Cancer Support CEO Gemma Peters called the figures “shocking”, saying they highlighted “the desperate situation for people living with cancer”.

Meanwhile in Gaza, cancer patients are being bombed in their hospital beds by Israel’s genocidal military assault, backed by the British government and the British military, headed by its Commander-in-Chief King Charles III.

Public preoccupation with the royals reveals unhealthy aspects of contemporary cultural and political life in Britain that are not easily brushed aside: an accepting attitude toward hereditary privilege, national insularity, and the role of social media platforms including X/Twitter in promoting right-wing conspiracy theories while censoring and suppressing socialist and left-wing views. But while deliberately sidelined, opposition to the monarchy and all it stands for is real.

By Sunday, “senior Whitehall figures” were blaming Russia, China and Iran for social media rumours targeting the royal family, accusations faithfully retailed by every section of British press. “Part of the modus operandi of hostile states is to destabilise things—whether that is undermining the legitimacy of our elections or other institutions,” a senior government official told the Telegraph.

The crisis of British institutions has little to do with Russian, Chinese, or Iranian interference. It reflects the shattering of the economic, political and moral legitimacy of British and world capitalism.

In November 1992, Queen Elizabeth II marked the 40th anniversary of her accession to the throne with a speech at London’s Guildhall that described an “Annus Horribilis” for the monarchy. Press headlines have used the phrase often in recent weeks (as a journalistic flourish) to describe the royal family’s current predicament.

The queen’s speech to the London guilds in 1992 was unusually strained as she alluded to scandals which had rocked the family that year, including the separation of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, Princess Anne’s divorce from Mark Phillips, and the release of Princess Diana’s biography exposing details of her unhappy marriage to Prince Charles, including his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Windsor Castle was gutted by fire just days before the speech.

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in Germany, October 1992 [Photo by Bundesarchiv / CC BY-SA 3.0]

The queen referenced “months of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty”, appealing for understanding and seeking to connect with broader feelings of unease. While the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 had been hailed as the “death of socialism” and “triumph of capitalism”, the post-war order was unravelling. The queen spoke at the height of a global recession (unemployment in Britain reached 12.1 percent in November) and just two months after Black Wednesday’s collapse of the pound sterling. War erupted in the Balkans, stoked by the NATO powers, aimed at reducing the territories of the former Yugoslavia to the status of neo-colonial protectorates.

The royal family’s troubles of the early 1990s appear a veritable golden age of stability compared to now. In her 1992 speech, Elizabeth appealed to the power of tradition, insisting that change could be “incorporated into the stability and continuity of a great institution,” but since then the monarchy’s crisis has deepened. Historically speaking it is terminal. The monarchy and its leading figures are overwhelmed by processes beyond their control. Their retreat inwards, behind the secluded walls of their estates, speaks to a deeper political and ideological impasse. As BBC royal correspondent Michael Cole told Politico this month, the events of recent months have revealed just “how bare the royal cupboard now is.”

Mass layoffs hit auto industry as job cuts mount, profits surge

Shannon Jones

The assembly line at the Ford Rouge assembly plant in Dearborn, Michigan. [AP Photo/Carlos Osorio]

Ford announced dramatic layoffs at its electric light truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, the latest in a week that saw job cuts hit broad sectors of the economy.

Out of a total workforce of 2,100 at its Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REV-C) in Dearborn, Ford said that 1,400 will be either transferred to other plants or asked to take early retirement. Ford said it is slashing production of the F-150 electric pickup built at REV-C from a projected 180,000 units this year to just 55,000. For 700 workers being told to transfer to the Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, no start date has been set. Meanwhile, the workers have been laid off.

General Motors has also issued layoff notices for 1,000 workers at Orion Assembly north of Detroit and 400 more layoffs at the Lansing Grand River factory also in Michigan. Last week, Stellantis also fired 400 white-collar workers during a mandatory remote workday.

Heavy machinery and agricultural implement maker John Deere is cutting 300 workers at its operations in Waterloo, Iowa, effective April 26. Earlier this month Deere said it is laying off another 150 workers at its Des Moines Works in Ankeny, Iowa, in April and May.

The stepped-up attack on jobs takes place as newly released government data show corporate profits in the US reached an all-time high in 2023. The US Department of Commerce reported that profits rose $133.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023 for an annualized rate of $3.4 trillion, the highest ever.

The surge in earnings came despite supposedly “historic” contracts by the United Auto Workers and Teamsters union. The reality is that while pay continues to lag behind inflation, corporations, with the assistance of the bureaucratized trade unions, are downsizing and rationalizing, squeezing ever more profit and production out of a smaller workforce. The profit figures also reflect profit gouging by the corporations, with, by one calculation, an estimated 53 percent of inflation from April to September 2023 accounted for higher profits.

The earnings figures are also a direct product of the policies of the Biden administration, which has driven up interest rates to in order to increase unemployment and undermine resistance by workers. At the same time, the White House has teamed up with the trade union apparatus to suppress strikes and hold down wage gains to below the level of inflation.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, left, speaks as President Joe Biden looks on during a campaign stop at a phone bank in the UAW Region 1 Union Hall, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Warren, Mich. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

In response to the profit report, the Biden administration issued a statement absurdly asking “companies to pass their savings on to consumers.” In reality, the entire policy of the White House is to safeguard the profits of the ruling class.

Job cuts are spreading to wider sections of the economy beyond auto. This month, Tyson Foods announced the closure of its plant in Perry, Iowa, with the loss of 1,300 jobs. The closure will devastate the community, where it is the largest employer. Packer Sanitation Services, a contractor at the plant, will lay off another 76 workers.

These cuts follow an investors conference at United Parcel Service where executives laid out plans for massive nationwide cuts. The logistics giant is closing some 200 distribution hubs around the US by 2028 as part of a plan to slash $3 billion in costs by 2028 at the expense of workers. UPS said that all its facilities were under review to examine ways that automation could be used to get rid of workers.

In announcing the planned cuts, UPS CEO Carol Tomé boasted that the Teamsters contract negotiated last summer made the plan feasible. “We are very pleased with that contract,” Tomé said.

Package delivery company FedEx is also preparing to carry out cuts as part of a $4 billion cost-cutting plan driven by the demands of Wall Street investors. In a separate move, the company said it is cutting 300 workers at a distribution center in Union City, Georgia.

In yet another round of job cuts at Amazon, the company is cutting 160 workers in its advertising division.

Layoffs are also sweeping education as pandemic assistance funds run out, leaving school districts struggling for cash as states impose austerity budgets. Districts which are planning cuts include Boston and San Diego. Hundreds of teachers and staff employed by the San Diego schools have already received layoff notices.

Meanwhile, school bus drivers working for Missouri Central School Bus could face 332 job cuts. Student Transportation of America in Kansas City plans to lay off 149 employees by June 30.

Striking workers at Ford Michigan Assembly Plant

While weekly new unemployment claims remained relatively low at 210,000, the current round of cuts will likely not be reflected in official figures until May. February saw the official unemployment rate rise 0.2 percent to 3.9 percent, and the total number of unemployed increased by 334,000 to 6.5 million.

Highlighting the role of the union apparatus as a pro-management police force, the number of strikes, which have been rising for years as workers seek to oppose record levels of social distress, has been extremely low so far this year.

So far in 2024 there has been only one large strike, the one-day walkout by California State University faculty, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of large strikes, defined as actions involving 1,000 or more workers, stood at 33 in 2023.

While last year’s figures reflect a significant growth in strikes from near-zero during the Obama administration, it is a pale reflection of the true level of social opposition, given that millions of workers have voted to authorize strike action only to have sellout contracts shoved down their throats.

Strike activity remains at historically low levels due to the betrayals of the union bureaucracy. By comparison, there were 474 large strikes in 1974. Since 1981 and the defeat of the air traffic controllers due to the treachery of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, the annual number of work stoppages has never gone over 100.

Further highlighting the parasitic role of the unions, the latest financial filing by the United Auto Workers reveals that the UAW lost 13,000 members in 2023, falling to just 370,239. That is the lowest total since the 2009 bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler. Despite this, the net assets of the UAW rose in 2023 to $1.13 billion.

In justifying his decision not to strike the entire Big Three operations but only target a handful of select plants, UAW President Fain had pointed to the danger of a wider walkout bankrupting the union. The supposedly epic 2023 “stand-up strike,” a partial strike which in fact did not seriously impact production, also did not even dent the gargantuan strike fund. The bureaucracy uses the strike fund as a gigantic piggy bank to fund its lavish lifestyles and six-figure salaries.

Stellantis cuts 3,597 jobs in Italy, escalating global jobs bloodbath

Marc Wells

A vehicle on the assembly line at Stellantis‘ Mirafiori plant in Italy in 2020 [Photo by Stellantis]

Auto giant Stellantis—maker of Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Peugeot and other brands—is escalating its global restructuring, producing thousands more casualties to workers’ jobs.

Stellantis announced this week 2,510 job cuts across three of its major plants in Italy: 1,560 at Turin’s historic Mirafiori plant, 850 at the Cassino factory and 100 at the Pratola Serra facility. On Wednesday, more deals were closed with the unions to cut an additional 1,087 workers at the Melfi, Pomigliano d’Arco, Termoli, Cento and Verrone plants.

In Italy as in other countries, CEO Carlos Tavares has been able to rely on the trade union bureaucracies to ram through redundancies.

Just a little over a week ago, during a press conference in Italy, Tavares boasted about the company’s record profits in 2023 and reassured that “Stellantis’ presence in Italy is not at risk.

“I want to say this loud and clear,” Tavares said. “Italy is one of our countries of origin, we love Italy and we feel an ethical responsibility toward our employees, whom I want to thank for everything they are doing.”

Significantly, he emphasized that “we have a good collaboration with the trade unions with whom we discuss daily about a responsible transition.”

The CEO went on to state that Stellantis was going to produce 1 million new vehicles in Italy by 2030 on the basis of a €1 billion incentive from the Italian government, and that billions more were to be invested, including a battery “giga factory,” to support the transition to electric vehicles (EVs).

None of this was ever meant to improve the lives of workers. On the contrary, the transnational corporation is carrying out a jobs massacre in country after country, for the purpose of enriching its major stockholders and executives, including Tavares himself.

In collusion with the CGIL-CISL-UIL trade unions, Stellantis is seeking to liquidate workers through what it calls “a voluntary incentivized exit,” in essence a glorified firing with the main goal of getting rid of older workers through an early retirement offer and an option to lay off younger recruits as well.

Since its formation via the merger of Fiat Chrysler and the PSA Group in early 2021, Stellantis has decimated jobs in Italy through such “voluntary” redundancies. In 2021, Stellantis employed roughly 55,000. Today, the number stands at 43,000, a fall of more than 21 percent.

For those eligible for retirement, they will get a six-month pay incentive. If a worker is within four years of retirement eligibility and takes the buyout, the first two of those years would be paid at 90 percent of gross wages including unemployment benefits (NASpI), and the remaining two years would be paid at 70 percent.

The “offer” extends well beyond workers close to retirement:

• For those between 35 and 39 years: 12 monthly payments plus €20,000.
• Between 40 and 44 years: 18 monthly payments plus €20,000.
• Between 45 and 49 years: 24 monthly payments plus €30,000.
• Between 50 and 54 years: 30 monthly payments plus €30,000.
• From 55 years and over: 33 monthly payments plus €30,000.

The union confederations are fully responsible for this Faustian bargain. After UIL and CISL signed off on the layoff arrangement, their statements were the final stab in the workers’ back.

Luigi Paone, General Secretary for UILM-UIL, declared: “The numbers demanded by the company in Turin are high and this must make us reflect on the fact that the situation is increasingly dramatic.” What is omitted from the statement is the fact that, by signing, the union facilitated this situation to develop.

Even more revealing is the statement from Rocco Cutrì, General Secretary for FIM-CISL: “The agreement allows the possibility of incentivized exits exclusively on voluntary basis by workers. This excludes the ability of Stellantis to fire unilaterally.” In other words, CISL wants to be part of the firing squad to make sure the company is not left alone with such a task!

FIOM-CGIL technically did not sign the deal. However, it continues to appeal to the most reactionary and dangerous forces. In a joint statement, General Secretary Michele De Palma and National Secretary Samuele Lodi appealed to the Italian government, led by the neo-fascist Giorgia Meloni: “The Prime Minister [Meloni] must summon Tavares before it’s too late.”

FIOM issued a more desperate appeal on Wednesday in light of the new wave of layoffs: “There’s no more time to waste. It is urgent that a meeting be convened at Palazzo Chigi with the Prime Minister and the CEO of Stellantis, Carlos Tavares. It’s time for everyone to assume their responsibilities to save the automotive industry in Italy.”

The reality is that it is Tavares who has been summoning governments around the world, extorting billions of dollars in incentives. Prime ministers and politicians of every stripe have facilitated this redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top with disastrous social consequences. Entire areas that used to thrive as centers of production are now devastated by a process of deindustrialization, while social programs are sacrificed in favor of measures to boost the financial elite.

Large conglomerates like Stellantis have acquired an immense concentration of economic and therefore political power. In Italy, this is even sharper, since Stellantis is the only automaker in the country. As the government scrambles for hopeless national “solutions” to a global situation, it is trying to engage a second car producer, which according to rumors could be Tesla or Chinese automakers BYD, Great Wall Motors or Chery.

Tavares’ response to these possibilities was nothing short of a threat: “Should Italy make certain decisions, we will draw our own conclusions.”

The layoffs are the prelude to a new era of precarious work. In the name of “flexibility” and “protecting national jobs,” more experienced workers are expended while new, cheaper hires will be utilized on a temporary basis, with limited or any benefits. Casualization is threatening an entire generation of workers.

In the US, a similar process is taking place. After terminating more than 2,000 temporary workers, Stellantis is now hiring new ones. At Ford, hundreds of jobs are being cut at the Dearborn, Michigan, EV pickup plant, with workers forced to transfer to other plants or accept the loss of their jobs. At General Motors, senior workers were offered a $50,000 bonus if they retired, but they are now being kept on hold indefinitely.

Germany’s children to be schooled for war once again

Philipp Frisch

The war mania of Germany’s coalition government has not spared schools. Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democrat, FDP) is planning to systematically school the younger generation for war. She is determined to implement the “new era”—i.e., the militarisation of society as a whole—and in the education sector as well.

Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger at a pro-Israel event at Berlin’s Humboldt University [Photo by Dr. Frank Gaeth / wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0]

Stark-Watzinger told the Funke media group newspapers that it was necessary to prepare society for crises. “Civil defence,” which ranged “from a pandemic to natural disasters to war,” belonged “in schools,” she said. The so-called new era in German politics had “changed a lot,” and the aim must be to “strengthen our resilience” and “make young people strong for the future.”

The education minister makes no secret of the fact that this is not really about natural disasters or pandemics, which the government has long since given up combating. “The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the associated turning point” must “naturally be a topic in lessons.”

This also included normalising the presence of the military in schools. A “relaxed relationship with the Bundeswehr” (Armed Forces) was necessary. To this end, “young officers should come into schools” to explain to pupils “what the Bundeswehr does for our security.” As a reservist, she even was prepared “in principle” to take up arms herself.

Politicians, the media and educational organisations have reacted to this militaristic agitation with a mixture of open enthusiasm and attempts to play down the significance of Stark-Watzinger’s comments. The warmongering and spiteful tirade published by Alan Posener in Die Zeit under the title “Bundeswehr into schools? Yes, please!” It was supposedly “not a sign of militarism if you can spell ‘howitzer’ or calculate how long the Ukrainian army can hold out if it needs a million artillery shells next year, but the European Union only produces 300,000.”

The German Teachers’ Association does not think the government’s plans go far enough. A “declaration of intent” from the education minister was not enough, said association president Stefan Düll. Now “the Ukraine war and the pan-European, even global threat situation must be taught in politics lessons.” The war was creating a “new awareness of military threats, which must also be taught in schools.” In an interview with the tabloid Bild, he took a stand against an “ atmosphere of peace, joy and pancakes.”

Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine” had “mercilessly demonstrated ... that military conflicts also directly affect our society and therefore the lives of pupils,” said the chairman of the Bavarian Association of Secondary School Teachers, Ulrich Babl, to broadcaster Bayrischer Rundfunk. However, spreading panic unnecessarily and “giving pupils gas masks and making them do exercises” was nonsense.

Such comments are no less dangerous than openly calling for lessons in war. Instead of trivialising the dangers, it is necessary to issue a clear warning about what is really going on: the government’s plans pose an enormous threat to the population.

Since Chancellor Olaf Scholz (Social Democrat SPD) announced his “new era” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which NATO had deliberately provoked with its aggressive expansion to the east, and thus put long-held armament plans into practice, the ruling class has been advancing on its pro-war course at breathtaking speed. Not a day goes by without calls for more weapons for the slaughter in Eastern Europe and new plans for more direct involvement in the war.

Last week, Economics Minister and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) called for Germany to prepare for a “land war” in Europe. A few weeks ago, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) called for a return to compulsory military service based on the Scandinavian model in order to make Germany “fit for war.” If the Scandinavian model were extrapolated to the German population, millions would be forced to go to war.

In January, Pistorius declared that he expected a war against Russia in “a period of five to eight years.” Who would fight in this war?—the generation attending school today.

After helping to systematically expend Ukrainian youth on the front line, and supporting the slaughter in Gaza, the government coalition—comprising the SPD, FDP and Greens—is now turning its attention to youth in Germany. They are to serve as cannon fodder in the race to re-divide the world, to fight and die—from Ukraine to the Hindu Kush and Southeast Asia to the “land war” in Europe. The foundations for this madness are to be laid through militaristic education at school.

The murky traditions of this militaristic initiative are well known, not least to pupils themselves in Germany. In history lessons, they still learn how militarism and the fight against opponents of war contaminated the entire society of the German Reich (Empire). The education of blind obedience to the Kaiser and the military pervades the accounts of pupils at the time. Today’s schoolchildren also learn how even the youngest members of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls were deprived of their youth for Hitler’s plans of conquest and annihilation.

The return of German militarism is not limited to schools. Back in 2013, in its strategy paper “New Power, New Responsibility,” the government-affiliated German Institute for International and Security Affairs announced: “German foreign policy will continue to utilise the entire range of foreign policy instruments, from diplomacy to development and cultural policy to the use of military force.” The aim was to establish “a ‘landscape of thought’ that not only enables and cultivates political creativity, but is also capable of developing political options quickly and in an operationalizable form.”

Shortly afterwards, Humboldt Professor Jörg Baberowski declared that Hitler was “not vicious.” His colleague Herfried Münkler described the idea that Germany bore the main responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War as a “legend.” Last month, Stark-Watzinger already called for the ban on military research at universities (the so-called “civilian clause”) to be removed. In this way, universities are to be put back at the service of foreign and war policy.

Venezuela’s electoral dispute triggers regional crisis

Andrea Lobo

The Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) controlled by President Nicolas Maduro blocked on Monday the registration of Corina Yoris as presidential candidate for the US-backed opposition in the elections programmed for July 28. 

Nicolas Maduro and Jorge Rodriguez, president of the National Assembly and chief negotiator , announce the recent agreements with the US-backed opposition and the Biden administration, October 20 [Photo: @NicolasMaduro]

Yoris, an 80-year-old philosophy professor, was appointed at the last minute as the namesake representative for Maria Corina Machado, who was selected as candidate by the opposition Unitary Platform but remains disqualified by the courts. 

On Tuesday, the CNE handed down an extension and allowed the coalition to register the former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia as candidate. The Unitary Platform accepted this as a provisional decision “until we succeed in registering our unitary candidature.” Machado said she will continue campaigning for Yoris to be placed on the ticket, given a rule that the candidate can be changed up to 10 days before the vote, that is, July 18. 

Machado and her party Vente Venezuela represent the most radical and fascistic wing of the coalition. She has been one of the staunchest promoters of US-backed coup operations against Maduro, including socially devastating sanctions, appeals for a military coup, and even calls for a foreign military intervention. 

Along with figures like Giorgia Meloni, Javier Milei, and Eduardo Bolsonaro, she is a signatory of the “Madrid Forum” charter launched by the fascistic Spanish party VOX, and Machado advocates  privatizing the state oil company PDVSA and other enterprises. 

The fact that such a figure is organizing increasingly large rallies, including in deeply impoverished areas, and that polls show she would defeat Maduro does not reflect mass support for her right-wing politics, but rather popular willingness to accept anybody with a chance of defeating Maduro and changing the current unbearable social and economic conditions. The election of fascistic Javier Milei against Peronism represented similar trends in Argentina. 

The actions of the Maduro government lack all progressive content, however. It has been using the CNE merely as an instrument in the negotiations with US imperialism. 

To divide the Unitary Platform, the CNE approved the candidacy of Manuel Rosales, governor of Zulia, and Enrique Márquez, a former electoral chief. It also approved the candidates for the traditional ruling parties before Hugo Chávez, the Social Democratic Action (AD) and Social Christian COPEI parties. Several other candidates of parties aligned with the Socialist United Party (PSUV) of Maduro were allowed to run. But as matters stand, it is widely expected that Maduro will win his third election. 

The last-minute decision to let the Unitary Platform register a candidate serves to buy time. The Biden administration has declared that, unless the Unitary Platform is allowed to present its chosen candidate, it will allow the US license to let Venezuela sell oil and gas expire on April 18. This would mean a reimposition of the full sanctions regime. For his part, Maduro hopes for a renewal before the time runs out for Yoris to be on the ticket or, for that matter, Machado.

The Maduro administration has also repressed any opposition from the left, with the CNE blocking the candidacy of Manuel Isidro Molina for the Communist Party and the Popular Alternative Movement (MPA) electoral coalition it leads. The Stalinist PCV leadership broke with Maduro in 2020, at a time when the government’s rapprochement with Washington and the AD, COPEI and other opposition parties, was imperiling its own position and privileges within the government. 

At the same time, the government’s shameful appeals to Washington and its special economic zones, massive corporate tax benefits, privatizations, attacks on wage levels and social cuts, all while its partners in the Boli-bourgeoisie continue to get wealthy through corrupt contracts, have made it all but impossible to provide a “left” cover to the PSUV.

While the brutal economic sanctions imposed under US imperialism are chiefly responsible for the massive impoverishment of Venezuelan workers, Maduro’s chief service to imperialism has been to impose a “shock therapy” that Argentine Milei could only dream of while suppressing the class struggle with the aid of the PCV and pseudo-left apologists. 

After a limited “recovery” in 2022, the poverty rate estimated by the Andrés Bello Catholic University has again “stagnated.” Last year, 82.8 percent of households were poor or could not afford the basic basket of goods and services, while more than half face extreme poverty, meaning they can’t afford staple foods. Since 2014, moreover, over 7 million Venezuelans have left the country.

Now the PSUV is seeking to remain in power for the Boli-bourgeoisie to reap the rewards from the super-exploitation of Venezuelan workers.

The Joe Biden administration has had a somewhat muted response to the electoral crisis, hoping to solidify access to Venezuelan oil to offset the effects of its war on Russia in Ukraine, and a potential broader war in the Middle East, as well as other geo-strategic considerations. 

The clandestine visit, by former British prime minister Boris Johnson to Venezuela to persuade Maduro not to deepen its relations with Russia, was undoubtedly carried out with approval from the British and US governments. UK-based Shell and British Petroleum, moreover, are negotiating the development of gas fields with Caracas. 

Milei gives refuge to Venezuelan far-right

Acting at the behest of US imperialism, the governments of Uruguay, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay and Peru issued a statement to protest the decision to block the Platform chosen candidates. 

The governments of Presidents Lula da Silva of Brazil and Gustavo Petro of Colombia, usually friendly toward Maduro, joined in to demand Caracas to allow the candidacy of Corina Yoris. In response, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil said Colombia was acting “by the need to please the wishes of the US Department of State.” 

Significantly, in December, Lula worked closely with Washington to confront Maduro’s threats to invade and take disputed territories of Guyana, a former British colony located between Venezuela and Brazil. Then, the fascistic President Javier Milei allowed six associates of Machado facing arrest warrants to take refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas on Tuesday.

Last week, the Venezuelan intelligence agency SEBIN arrested the chairwoman and vice-chair of Machado’s party Vente Venezuela and issued arrest warrants against seven of her associates, including several who had been mentioned as possible replacements for Machado. This follows the arrest of six regional campaign managers for the opposition and dozens of others, including military personnel. 

Government prosecutors claim that these figures have been involved in various plots to de-stabilize the government, carry out a coup, and assassinate the president. 

Maduro said that two armed individuals who allegedly confessed belonging to Vente Venezuela, which he described as a “far-right fascist party,” were arrested on Monday a few feet away from where he was speaking on a stage in Caracas. 

The Argentine presidency has denounced the cutting of the water supply and electricity from its embassy in Caracas and warned against “any deliberate action that endangers the safety of Argentine diplomatic personnel and Venezuelan citizens under their protection.” 

The Milei government then announced that it was sending two gendarmes (military police) to the embassy and ambassador’s residence in Caracas. Also, during an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Milei said that Venezuela had been reduced to “carnage,” while Israel had not committed any “excess” in Gaza.

He then went on a rampage against regional presidents. Regarding Colombian President Petro, Milei said “not much can be expected from someone who was a murderer, a terrorist, a communist,” referring to his past in the M-19 guerrillas during the 1980s. Finally, the Argentine president said about his Mexican counterpart, “That an ignoramus like López Obrador speaks ill of me is an honor to me.” 

These actions follow the visit by CIA director William Burns to Buenos Aires on March 20, confirming that the Argentine regime is becoming a hub for anti-democratic conspiracies at the behest of US imperialism, just like in the 1970s.

After the interview, Petro withdrew his ambassador in Buenos Aires and expelled all Argentine diplomats from Colombia. 

The near rupture of diplomatic relations between the second and third largest countries in South America, however, cannot be explained by mere verbal insults.

The diplomatic flare-up in Latin America can only be understood as a birthing pain in the eruption of a world war. It reflects the maneuvers of factions of the ruling class between and within countries in response to the breakup of the post-WWII order and the drive by the US-NATO axis to recolonize and redivide the world, which currently takes the form of economic and military conflict with Russia, Iran and China. 

Like all forms of bourgeois third-world regionalism—Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism, etc.—the pretensions of “Bolivarianism” to achieve Latin American unity on a capitalist basis as a counterweight to imperialism have reached their final dead-end. 

Moreover, while some like Maduro cover their underlying class interests in “pro-worker” demagogy, all factions are competing for a larger piece of the pie from the exploitation of the working class, while their pseudo-left apologists sweep the floor for the crumbs.

California fast food restaurants conduct mass layoffs in retaliation against state minimum wage increase

Dan Conway

A Pizza Hut restaurant is seen in Los Angeles. [AP Photo/Associated Press/Reed Saxon]

Multiple California fast food restaurants have begun mass layoffs and other cost-cutting measures in advance of the April 1 enactment of a new state minimum wage law. Wages would increase for fast food workers from the current poverty-level $16 per hour to an only slightly less onerous $20 per hour.

In December, two large Pizza Hut franchise operators announced that they would be laying off all in-house delivery drivers in favor of paid delivery services, such as Doordash and Uber Eats. Excalibur Pizza, which owns the Round Table Pizza chain, also announced that it would eliminate 73 driver positions by mid-April as well.

Approximately 1,100 Pizza Hut delivery drivers are set to lose their jobs across the state. This is despite the fact that Yum Brands, owner of Pizza Hut, had gross profits of $5.302 billion for 2023, a 4.02 percent increase over the previous year.

Other chains, including Mexican-themed chicken restaurant El Pollo Loco and hamburger restaurant Jack in the Box, announced that they would begin utilizing robotics to automate some operations, including salsa making and fry stations. Hiring freezes have also been announced in nearly every other fast food chain.

McDonald’s and Chipotle Mexican Grill also announced in November they would be increasing prices to offset the minimum wage increase. The McDonald’s announcement follows nationwide price increases of 10 percent in 2023 at the fast food behemoth. Since 2019, prices at fast food restaurants overall have increased an average of 30 percent.

The new law, California Assembly Bill 1228, establishes the new minimum wage for all those restaurants classified as “limited service,” meaning that limited or no table service, i.e., wait staff, is offered and that all food and beverage items are purchased before being consumed. Furthermore, only those chains with more than 60 locations nationwide are subject to the new provisions.

The new legislation also creates a nine-member “Fast Food Council” with the authority to annually increase wages by the lower of the Consumer Price Index or 3.5 percent, guaranteeing that under current inflationary trends workers continue to receive cuts in real pay each year.

More than 500,000 California workers are employed in the fast food industry, while more than 70 percent of Californians consume fast food at least once per week, largely due to time and budgetary constraints faced by broad sections of the working class.

With fast food workers working between 16 and 34 hours each week, a $4 an hour minimum wage increase will result in these workers seeing increases in weekly pay between $64 to $136 per worker before taxes.

Many of these workers live in extreme poverty and often rely heavily on private and public support programs to survive. A $20 per hour wage will still leave most fast food workers highly impoverished.

Ironically, it will disqualify many of these workers from state assistance, such as the CalFresh food assistance program, which has an abysmally low income threshold of $18,954 for a one-person household and $25,636 for a two-person household.

This is considered a major drain to the state’s finances with the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office recently announcing a projected budget deficit of $58 billion. Major spending cuts to social programs such as education and food assistance are either being considered or already being implemented.

The minimum wage bill’s passage was supported by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which also last month announced the creation of a new California Fast Food Workers Union.

Joseph Bryant, international executive president of SEIU, proclaimed while announcing the union last month, “The idea of it [the union] is to really build the voices by bringing hundreds and eventually thousands of workers together to be able to make demands, to be able to ensure they are getting treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.” Workers are to pay $20 a month for membership in the new union.

Unlike traditional unions, the Fast Food Workers Union has no collective bargaining rights with the restaurant employers. Instead, the SEIU has promised that the workers will be “represented” by the Fast Food Labor Council, whose 11 members consist of representatives from both the union and the fast food industry and all of whom will be appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature.

The council is an advisory body only, and its recommendations for restaurant standards will be sent to state labor agencies for consideration. It does not have the ability to impose new benefits for employees, such as additional paid time off or fair scheduling policies. Once the council’s recommendations are sent to the agencies, they can either ignore or revise the recommendations however they see fit.

Proponents of the new council, including the trade unions and the pseudo-left, cynically argue that the councils increase the negotiating power of workers through the use of so-called sector bargaining wherein conditions for entire industries are set rather than local agreements made in piecemeal fashion. California SEIU President David Huerta hailed the new fast food council as putting “power in the hands of workers to improve conditions across the entire industry.”

In reality, this is a corporatist body, drawing together the union bureaucracy, major corporations and the government to jointly suppress wages. It is strikingly similar to the infamous wage board set up by the Nixon administration in the early 1970s, with the exception that that body aimed to limit wage increases to 5 percent a year, not 3.5 percent.

The trade unions were eventually forced to quit the wage board following massive opposition in the working class, and the ultra-conservative AFL-CIO President George Meany denounced it as the “first step towards fascism” in the United States.

However, by the 1980s, the trade unions began adopting corporatism as their official policy as they moved sharply to the right and began working with the employers to limit wages and enforce mass layoffs.

It is a striking sign of how far to the right the so-called “left” factions of the Democratic Party are that the Fast Food Council has been promoted by fake progressive Democrats, such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

“It is likely we’ll see a continued push for more sectoral labor standards,” said UC Berkeley Labor Center Co-chairperson Ken Jacobs in reference to the new Fast Food Council. Jacobs noted that traditional collective bargaining is likely to become less prevalent statewide in favor of “the user of labor standards boards in certain industries, where the structure of the industry makes traditional collective bargaining more difficult.”

In fact, the new Fast Food Council is simply a reintroduction of California’s Industrial Welfare Commission. Dormant for more than 20 years, the commission was an industry-led group working in collusion with union representatives and Sacramento politicians to set wages and work standards.

New Zealand sinks into recession amid escalating assault on jobs, social conditions

John Braddock

A blunt headline reading “Austerity bites” was emblazoned across the front page of the Post newspaper in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington, on March 22. Referencing an aggressive tactic used in rugby union scrums, the subhead declared: “Rolling maul of public service job cuts begins.”

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with Finance Minister Nicola Willis [Photo: Facebook/Nicola Willis MP]

A day earlier Statistics NZ revealed that the country slid into recession in the December 2023 quarter. The economy contracted 0.3 percent in the three months ended September, followed by another 0.1 percent in December. The inflation figure was 4.7 percent.

The economy has shrunk in four of the past five quarters, driven by the Reserve Bank’s policy to ramp up unemployment as a battering ram against any wages push by workers who face soaring living costs. The official unemployment rate rose 0.6 percentage points during 2023, from 3.4 to 4.0 percent, and is projected to exceed 5 percent this year.

The Post article appeared at the end of a week dominated by announcements from the far-right National Party-ACT-NZ First coalition government of mass sackings, cuts to public services and attacks on working conditions.

Impending public service job cuts “could be in the thousands” according to the Post. In just one day, two key ministries—the Ministry of Health and Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)—announced a total of 550 losses. The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) opened a second round of “voluntary” redundancies covering expanded work areas.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has ordered savings of 6.5 or 7.5 percent across the public sector, requiring departmental heads to determine how to execute the brutal measures. The Health Ministry is looking at a 25 percent reduction of staff, around 180 jobs, while MPI is proposing a 9 percent cut of 384 jobs.

Wellington, with a metropolitan population of 422,000 and an economy depending largely on its public sector workforce, will be hard hit. A spokesperson for recruitment agency Robert Walters said it was already seeing skilled workers looking to move to Auckland and Australia.

Underscoring the government’s vindictive attitude towards the entire working class, the far-right ACT Party leader and cabinet minister David Seymour posted on Twitter/X in response to the MPI job losses: “Good.” Willis airily dismissed widespread anger over the cuts, saying: “I am sure there will be other job opportunities.”

Public services are being scrapped or deferred to fund the government’s tax cuts to benefit the wealthy. Some of the most vulnerable layers of the working class are in the firing line.

Last week the disabled community found out via a Facebook post that funding was being reduced for a wide range of support payments, including for equipment such as wheelchairs, communication devices and housing and motor vehicle modifications. School lunch programs are facing cuts of up to 50 percent; and free bus fares for 5–12 year-olds and half fares for 13–24 year-olds will be scrapped, increasing the financial burden on already struggling families.

Large scale cuts to infrastructure and essential services are being foreshadowed as a wedge for privatisations. Education Minister Erica Stanford announced that 20 school building projects have been paused and another 350, ranging from design to pre-construction, could be scaled down or scrapped. She indicated that private-public partnerships could be used to build new schools.

A similar situation faces the ageing Cook Strait inter-island ferries whose scheduled replacement has now been cancelled. Half a billion dollars is also being cut from public science funding.

The sweeping austerity program is designed to underpin a massive transfer of wealth to the rich. The central promise of National’s campaign in last year’s election was for $NZ9 billion in income tax cuts over four years, heavily favouring top income earners.

According to Newsroom, after increased costs from a $2.9 billion tax cut for landlords, the government faces a $1.5 billion fiscal gap. In unprecedented criticism of the government of which he is part, NZ First leader and Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters signaled last week that there is in fact a “fiscal hole” of $5.6 billion in National’s budget figures and he could not see how Willis was going to fix it.

The tax cuts will be paid for with even deeper spending cuts, reallocation of revenues, or borrowing. The last option raises the spectre of a crisis similar to that triggered by former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, who proposed to cover unfunded tax cuts with large-scale borrowing, triggering financial chaos and her rapid political demise in 2022.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on March 20 warned that New Zealand’s tax cuts would be inflationary, called on the government to keep spending low and opposed more borrowing. The IMF repeated previous calls for a comprehensive capital gains tax and a land tax, which the government has rejected.

Sections of the ruling elite fear an upsurge of class struggles. The social crisis—for which the last Labour government was equally responsible—is pushing workers to the left and fueling hostility towards all the major political parties. The political establishment’s support for US imperialism against Russia and China, and the US-backed genocide in Gaza, is also radicalising workers and young people.

The corporatist trade unions are doing everything they can to block any struggle by workers against the far-right government. Apart from a handful of pleading press releases, not one union has announced any plans to fight the onslaught. The Public Service Association simply called MPI cuts a “reckless gamble” and complained that promises to generally restrict cuts to “backroom staff” were not being kept.

The National-led government was scrabbled together after October’s election, which was characterised by mass disaffection. Labour’s share of the vote collapsed amid widespread anger in the working class over its austerity program. After just over 100 days in office, the coalition is already in an escalating crisis. Willis, who had boasted last September, “I’d quit as finance minister if my tax cut plan fails,” is facing demands for exactly that.

Business commentator Fran O’Sullivan wrote in the Weekend Herald on March 23 that former National Party Prime Minister John Key had met with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and urged him to pull back. Key warned Luxon against “risking plunging the country into so much discontent their program has to be abandoned and they don’t get re-elected.”

Right-wing commentator for the New Zealand Herald, Matthew Hooton, derided National’s “ludicrous” tax plan, saying it was “largely written by lobbyists, doesn’t add up and would cause higher inflation and higher interest rates than even Labour, despite the full benefits going to only 0.18 percent of households.”

The Labour opposition is now embroiled in its own crisis over tax policy. In a desperate attempt to recover ground from the party’s drubbing at the election, leader and former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins last week hypocritically called for a public debate on a new “progressive” tax system. In fact, after six years in government during which Labor did nothing to change the “unfair” tax system, Hipkins entered last year’s election declaring wealth taxes were off the table.