Azerbaijan-Armenia fighting erupts over disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region

Kumaran Ira

Over the weekend, fierce fighting broke out between Azeri and Armenian forces over the disputed breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, adjacent to southwestern Azerbaijan and eastern Armenia in the South Caucasus. Clashes reportedly left a total of 30 soldiers dead and caused civilian casualties.

Both countries blamed each other for the fighting, and it remains unclear how it began. On Saturday, Azerbaijan said that 12 Azeri forces had been killed and a Mi-24 helicopter shot down in the fighting. According to the Armenian government, 18 of its troops were killed and 35 wounded.

Armenia accused Azerbaijan of carrying out a “massive attack along the Karabakh front line using tanks, artillery, and helicopters” on Friday night. For its part, Azerbaijan said that it retaliated after coming under fire from “large-calibre artillery and grenade-launchers.”

The conflict threatens to escalate into a broader war between Russia, Armenia’s main backer, and Azerbaijan’s ally, Turkey, and behind Turkey the entire NATO alliance. Turkey backs Azerbaijan, where the Turkic Azeris are the ethnic majority, but relations between Turkey and Armenia are particularly fraught due to the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman empire in 1915.

In this context, it is significant that American press reports attributed responsibility for the fighting to the Azeri side. The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Late Friday, Azeri forces launched a bid to seize positions in Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave that lies within Azerbaijan’s borders and was overtaken by Armenia during a six-year war that ended with a 1994 cease-fire.”

Azeri officials indicated they were pushing for a military rather than a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Azeri ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu told state-owned Russia Today, “The attempts of a peaceful solution to this conflict have been underway for 22 years. How much more will it take? We are ready for a peaceful solution to the issue. But if it’s not solved peacefully then we will solve it by military means.”

On Sunday, although Azerbaijan announced a unilateral ceasefire in fighting Armenian forces, Armenia denounced Baku’s claim, stating that the fighting was continuing and that Armenia was preparing to intervene.

“Armenia has violated all the norms of international law. We won’t abandon our principal position. But at the same time, we will observe the ceasefire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully,” President Ilham Aliyev said.

“The statement by the Azerbaijan side is an information trap and does not amount to a unilateral ceasefire,” said Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman for the Armenian Defence Ministry. Deputy Defence Minister David Tonoyan said Armenia stood ready to provide “direct military assistance” to Nagorno-Karabakh forces if necessary.

The fighting between the two countries over the disputed region is the most intense since the 1994 Russian-brokered ceasefire ended a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian mountainous region in Azerbaijan, declared independence in 1991. The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh had begun in 1988, when Azerbaijan and Armenia were still part of the Soviet Union, and escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s, after the Stalinist bureaucracy dissolved the Soviet Union in 1991. The war between Azeri troops and Armenian separatists killed some 30,000 people by the time of the 1994 ceasefire.

The current fighting comes amid escalating tensions between NATO and Russia due to the US and European intervention in the region. The NATO powers orchestrated a fascist-led coup to oust pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014. Since the coup, NATO powers have stepped up a massive military buildup against Russia in Eastern Europe as part of a plan to reduce Russia to semi-colonial status.

Russia and the NATO powers also clashed over Syria: while Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the US and the EU stoked a proxy war, backing various Al Qaeda-linked Islamist forces, including ISIS, to oust Assad. After the Kremlin oligarchy mounted its own reactionary military intervention to back Assad last year—fearing that the loss of its Syrian ally could undermine its global influence, encouraging Washington to step up Islamist destabilisation operations in Russia itself—Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet outright last November in Syria.

Such reckless actions by the NATO powers have put conflicts in the region on edge and threaten to escalate conflicts like the one in Nagorno-Karabakh into a disastrous, all-out war.

The Christian Science Monitor quoted Jeffrey Mankoff, a former adviser on US-Russia relations at the US State Department, currently deputy director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Russia and Eurasia Program. He said, “Russia is not just looking for peace, but is rather looking for some arrangement that maximizes their regional influence over both countries. If there’s going to be a settlement, it will have to be on Russia’s terms.”

“Russia doesn’t want conflict because it’s trying to increase its influence over both countries. If they can do that through resolving the conflict, then that’s an option, but failing that, the status quo benefits Russia fairly well,” said Mankoff.

Russia has 5,000 troops in Armenia, in order to deter a Turkish war against Armenia, with the threat that this would escalate into a war with Russia, Mankoff explained: “The Russian troops’ main role is to deter Turkish involvement, should there be a serious resumption of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”

The war danger posed by the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis points to the disastrous geopolitical consequences of the dissolution of the USSR, and the reactionary character of the nationalist politics that predominate in all the former Soviet republics, including Russia. This provided the basis for the emergence of explosive ethnic conflicts and imperialist intrigue across the region.

In a statement, the US State Department declared, “We urge the sides to show restraint, avoid further escalation, and strictly adhere to the ceasefire. We reiterate that there is no military solution to the conflict.” It also condemned “in the strongest terms the large-scale ceasefire violations ... which have resulted in a number of reported casualties, including civilians.”

In regard to recent conflict, the Turkish government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Armenia and took an aggressive stance. Declaring that he would back Azerbaijan “to the end,” Erdogan said, “We pray our Azeri brothers will prevail in these clashes.”

Erdogan also blamed the Minsk Group (France, Russia and the United States) for failing to implement a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. “If the Minsk Group had solved the problem in due time, we wouldn’t have witnessed the events now taking place on the contact line,” said Erdogan in the US during an opening ceremony of a Turkish-American Culture and Civilization Center in Maryland.

For their part, Russia and Iran urged Azerbaijan and Armenia to immediately cease fire. “President Putin calls on the parties in the conflict to observe an immediate ceasefire and exercise restraint in order to prevent further casualties,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“We invite both of our northern neighbours to restraint and avoiding any action that can turn the situation more difficult,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari said.

The working class in France mobilizes against austerity

Alex Lantier

French youth and workers have carried out mass demonstrations to protest Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri’s reactionary labour law reform. They have done so in defiance of the state of emergency imposed by the Socialist Party (PS) government after the November 13 Paris terror attacks. These initial mobilizations mark a new stage in the international class struggle, with implications well beyond the borders of France.

The attempt to promote hysteria over terrorism to suppress popular opposition is failing in the face of a growing radicalization of workers and youth. The working class has not been intimidated by the state of emergency and is entering into struggle against the social counterrevolution being carried out by the PS government and the European Union as a whole.

University students are organizing on-going protests and meetings, hundreds of high schools are being blockaded by students, and growing sections of workers are taking strike action. Last Thursday, port workers, Air France employees and transit workers struck across France, while workers walked out at steel and auto plants in various cities.

As it enters into struggle, the working class finds itself compelled from the outset to define its aims and interests in opposition to all the forces that for decades have represented official “left” politics. There is deep anger against the PS government of President François Hollande, elected in 2012 with the support of the Left Front and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), as it seeks to destroy social rights won in historic struggles of the working class in the 20th century.

The El Khomri Law would lengthen the workday by up to two hours, increase the precariousness of employment for young workers, and allow the unions, in violation of France’s Labour Code, to work out contracts with employers at the level of individual firms.

The fact that this regressive and unpopular proposal would violate existing law testifies to its illegitimate character. That it is being pushed by a supposedly “socialist” party, which depends for the implementation of its attacks on unions whose budgets are 95 percent funded by the state and big business, underlines the fraudulent and anti-working class character of the entire framework of what passes for “left” politics in France.

An explosive political dynamic is developing. Despite the relentless promotion of fear and national chauvinism in connection with the terror attacks, a deeply rooted mood of social militancy is developing among workers and youth. This has taken the PS government by surprise and frightened pseudo-left organizations such as the Left Front and the NPA, which are deeply integrated into the PS.

Something of 1968 is in the air. In the May-June general strike of that year, tens of millions of workers erupted into struggle against the seemingly impregnable government of Charles de Gaulle and in opposition to the Stalinist French Communist Party. What is emerging today is a similar explosion of the class struggle against a discredited PS government and its political allies. The broad popular opposition to PS austerity revealed by the protests has already deeply shaken the Hollande government, France’s most unpopular administration since World War II.

On Thursday, as over a million people across France marched against the El Khomri Law, Hollande withdrew a proposed amendment enshrining in the Constitution the state of emergency as well as a policy of depriving terrorists of French nationality. Though the Senate and the National Assembly had both passed versions of the amendment, Hollande did not attempt to reconcile the differences between the two measures.

The reversal provoked consternation in sections of the media close to the PS, which fear that it marks the end of any hope of the PS avoiding a wipeout in next year’s presidential election. Le Monde called it a “major political disaster,” warning that “after this calamitous episode, Mr Hollande leaves behind him a field of ruins.”

Libération wrote: “François Hollande wanted to build national unity above the parties… He succeeded only in earning the opprobrium of his own camp and creating the spectacle of a petty political game, which citizens, even the most favourably disposed, did not understand and in many cases totally rejected.”

The entire reactionary strategy pursued by the administration of Prime Minister Manuel Valls since it emerged from the governmental crisis of the autumn of 2014 is threatened with disintegration.

At its heart, this strategy relied on using the terror attacks carried out in Europe by Islamist forces mobilized by French imperialism and its allies for their war in Syria to present Hollande as a “war president” and promote the neo-fascist National Front (FN). The PS responded to each attack by seeking to create a right-wing, nationalist atmosphere and incite Islamophobia to divide the workers and suppress social opposition to its austerity agenda.

After the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shootings, Hollande invited FN leader Marine Le Pen to the Elysée Presidential Palace. After the November 13 attacks, he promoted two policies linked to the far right: the state of emergency first implemented in 1955 to wage the Algerian war, and deprivation of nationality, forever associated with its use to launch the deportation of Jews from Occupied France during the Holocaust.

This politically criminal strategy encountered no meaningful opposition from pseudo-left forces such as the Left Front and the NPA, both of which have supported the Syrian war. Left Front deputies voted for the state of emergency in the National Assembly.

As the passage of versions of the constitutional amendment by both houses of parliament makes clear, there is no opposition in ruling circles to the rehabilitation of the bloodiest crimes of French imperialism in the 20th century. This is a serious warning to the working class.

In the face of rising social opposition, however, the PS did not feel the current political climate allowed it to proceed with negotiating a compromise version of its reactionary amendment.

These events signify that workers entering into battle against the El Khomri Law are facing a historic struggle. The attempt to rehabilitate the legacy of the French far right and the attack on workers’ social rights in the El Khomri Law are rooted not in the personal cynicism and corruption of the PS and its political and trade union accomplices, but in an objective global crisis of capitalism.

Amid an escalating spiral of economic collapse and war, every imperialist power is driven into ruthless competition for profits and strategic advantage. French capitalism, deindustrialized by decades of reactionary governments of all stripes and crumbling under a worn-out infrastructure and a mountain of debt, sees no way out other than wars of plunder from Mali to Syria, and a policy of plunder against workers within France itself. To create a suitable political climate for the economic policies they are driven to carry out, all of the bourgeois parties, including the PS and its satellites, fall in line with the rehabilitation of fascism and militarism.

The only way forward in the struggle against the El Khomri Law is the path of intransigent political struggle by the working class against capitalism, and, in particular, the so-called “left” parties of the bourgeoisie. No confidence can be given to proposals by the student unions and trade unions to negotiate with Prime Minister Valls over token changes to the El Khomri Law. These are simply attempts to impose this reactionary bill with the aid of the pseudo-left parties and their union allies.

Above all, the struggle must be liberated from the national straitjacket these forces seek to impose upon it. In the fight against the reactionary policies of Hollande, the main allies of the French workers and youth are the workers of all other countries, mobilized in a united struggle for socialism in opposition to austerity, war and attacks on democratic rights.

Democrats silent as one million lose food stamp benefits in the US

Patrick Martin

Tens of thousands of impoverished, unemployed adults were cut off food stamps Friday, the first wave of a social catastrophe that could affect more than one million people this year.

Some 22 states began terminating benefits for “Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents,” or ABAWDs, in the jargon of the US Department of Agriculture, which administers the federally funded food stamp program, or Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), as it is formally known.

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These adults, aged 18 to 49 years and without children, are generally the poorest section of the working class, earning only 17 percent of the official poverty rate, an average of barely $150-170 per month in income. But they are eligible for only 90 days of feood stamp benefits unless they have paid employment or job training for at least 80 hours in a month. The 90-day clock began running January 1, so adults who no longer qualify under this rule began being terminated in state after state April 1.

The 22 states include Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia.

Another 22 states (see map) had already enforced work requirements to cut food stamp benefits for ABAWDs in 2015 or earlier. Those states account for 30 percent of the US population, while the states that are imposing work requirements this year account for another 35 percent.

The numbers in some of the larger states are staggering. Florida alone will cut off benefits to an estimated 300,000 childless adults; Tennessee 150,000 and North Carolina 110,000. New York state will cut off more than 50,000, including 3,000 people in Manhattan, home to the world’s biggest concentration of billionaires. Missouri cuts off 60,000; Alabama 40,000 and Massachusetts 23,000.

The work requirements for food stamp recipients were waived for most states during the deep recession that followed the 2008 financial crash. States had to have an official unemployment rate above 10 percent, or at least 20 percent above the national average, or demonstrate a weak labor market under other criteria set down by the Department of Labor.

The number of childless adults eligible for food stamps jumped from 1.7 million in 2007 to 4.9 million in 2013, then began to decline to 4.7 million in 2014, largely because states like Kansas and Ohio began to impose work requirements.

The harsh “work for food” requirements were first introduced for food stamps under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. This is the notorious “welfare reform” bill sponsored by then-US Rep. John Kasich, who is now Ohio’s governor and a Republican candidate for president, and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, husband of the current frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It is particularly noticeable that none of the presidential candidates of either capitalist party, including the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, has made an issue of the food stamp cutoff that is plunging hundreds of thousands overnight into hunger and destitution.

Senator Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are in the midst of a campaign in the April 19 New York primary, but neither has said a word on behalf of the more than 50,000 New Yorkers who began losing their food stamp benefits Friday.

On Tuesday, Bill Clinton will campaign for his wife in Erie County, which includes the city of Buffalo, devastated by the collapse of the steel industry. Some 2,800 Erie County residents were cut off food stamps April 1, but it is unlikely that the former president, who has raked in more than $100 million in income since he left the White House, will have anything to say about it.

Hillary Clinton gloried in the “welfare reform” legislation in her 2003 memoirLiving History (for which she was paid $8 million). She wrote that Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the program the bill abolished, “had helped to create generations of welfare-dependent Americans … I strongly argued that we had to change the system, although my endorsement of welfare reform came at some personal cost.” The “cost,” of course, was to her political credibility as a supposed advocate of the poor.

Clinton claimed that the legislation her husband signed “was a critical first step to reforming our nation’s welfare system. I agreed that he should sign it and worked hard to round up votes for its passage—though he and the legislation were roundly criticized by some liberals, advocacy groups for immigrants and most people who worked with the welfare system.”

Sanders has criticized Hillary Clinton repeatedly for giving speeches to Wall Street audiences in return for six-figure fees, as well as raking in campaign contributions from the financial and fossil fuel industries. But he has not sought to make a connection between Clinton’s close ties to the super-rich and the record of the first Clinton administration, particularly its attack on the poorest sections of the working class.

Nor has Sanders, in general, made an issue of the cuts in vital social programs, particularly those implemented with the collaboration of the Obama administration, like the $8.7 billion cut in food stamp benefits pushed through in 2014 as part of a bipartisan deal with congressional Republicans, or this year’s drastic cutback in food stamp eligibility for childless adults.

Food stamp recipients, and particularly childless adults on food stamps, have become targets of abuse for big business politicians of both parties. Several of the states now implementing work requirements have gone well beyond the regulations set down by the federal Department of Agriculture or the provisions of the welfare reform law.

State governments are permitted to seek exemptions from benefit cutoffs for regions of the state with particularly high concentrations of unemployment, even if the state as a whole no longer qualifies. In New York state, for example, the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx have such exemptions, although Manhattan does not.

But many states, like Florida, have refused to seek such exemptions. The Missouri legislature even passed a bill last year prohibiting the state government from seeking a waiver, with legislators claiming it was easy for the unemployed to find at least 20 hours work per week.

In Mississippi, with one of the highest unemployment rates and highest poverty rates in the country, Republican Governor Phil Bryant chose not to extend the waiver of the work requirement. “We want people to go to work in Mississippi,” he said in a statement. “We want these individuals to get a good job and live the American dream, not just be dependent on the federal government.”

Cuts lead to closure of hundreds of public libraries across UK

Alice Summers

Hundreds of the UK’s public libraries have been closed since 2010, as revealed by a BBC News Freedom of Information request.

A report compiled by the BBC’s data team shows that 343 libraries across the country have been forced to close due to drastic cuts to local government spending. In the same period, almost 8,000 library workers lost their jobs—about a quarter of the overall total. A further 111 libraries are expected to be closed in the coming year as part of the government’s relentless, draconian attacks on public services.

Particularly badly hit have been the local areas under the Labour-dominated councils of Sefton in Merseyside, Brent in North London, and Sunderland, where more than half their libraries have been closed since 2010. Libraries in Stoke-on-Trent, with its Conservative/UK Independence Party/independent coalition, have been closed at a similar rate.

Sheffield suffered from the worst job cuts, with the number of paid library employees across the city sharply declining from 420 workers in 2010 to a mere 165 in 2015. The largest percentage drop in library workers was in Harrow in northwest London. In 2010 the council paid 164 people, but now there are just 60 employees. These are employed by an external provider, which now runs the service.

Many other libraries that have managed to withstand closure have had their opening hours dramatically reduced.

A further 50 libraries have been handed to external organisations to run, while 174 libraries have been transferred to community groups to be managed by unpaid and largely untrained volunteers. More than 15,000 volunteers have had to be drafted in to plug the huge staffing deficit left by the funding cutbacks. The number of unpaid volunteers has risen from 15,861 in 2010, to 31,403 as of the March report.

Volunteers are not a viable substitute for professional library staff. Nick Poole, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), stated, “Volunteers have always been a vibrant part of our library service, but they cannot replace the expertise, ethics and professional skills of qualified staff who are fundamental to providing the quality library services that we are entitled to by law.”

Under the 1964 Public Libraries and Museums Act, the government and its local authorities have a legal obligation to provide public library services.

Local residents and librarians all over the country have protested these cuts to their public services, with many protests attracting the support of high-profile names such as classicist Mary Beard and actor Brian Blessed. Demonstrations have been held in many towns and cities and residents have signed petitions and staged sit-ins.

Legal challenges have been brought by CILIP and local residents against the Department of Culture, Media and Sport over its failure to fulfil its legal duty to keep branches open and to provide quality library services.

In Lambeth, South London, hundreds of residents turned out in protest at the proposed closure to their local libraries, while in November of last year librarians and other staff at the London borough’s 10 public libraries walked out in an unofficial strike against the conversion of three libraries into “healthy living centres.”

On March 31, dozens of local residents occupied Carnegie Library in south London in an attempt to prevent its closure. The library was to close for the last time at 6 p.m. that evening, with around 80 people remaining in the building. Labour-run Lambeth Council is closing the library, which is due to reopen in a year as a “healthy living centre,” including a vaguely defined “neighbourhood library service,” as part of its cost-cutting programme.

On February 9, bestselling authors Cathy Cassidy, Alan Gibbons and Philip Ardagh addressed a packed hall in Westminster, London as librarians, students and other supporters from across the UK rallied to petition Parliament against the cuts. Labelling the closure of hundreds of libraries as a “national scandal” in her speech to protesters, Cassidy said, “Libraries build communities, weave those communities together and help people climb the ladder towards their own potential, one book at a time. It is beyond shameful that Britain can even think of closing libraries, slamming the door on culture and opportunity for young and old alike.”

In Birmingham, police were called to the city’s main library after around 30 students staged a sit-in, refusing to leave the library for many hours after its official closing time to protest against reduced opening hours and staff redundancies.

Birmingham Library, which cost approximately £189 million to construct, is Europe’s largest public library. It houses over 1 million books, as well as theatres, music rooms and a gallery and has been named one of the UK’s most visited attractions.

However, in 2015, less than two years after it first opened, the library’s budget was slashed by £1.3 million. Its opening hours were reduced by 50 percent, with 100 staff expected to be made redundant as part of Birmingham City Council’s wider plans to cut 6,000 jobs and to make £300 million in savings. As with the vast majority of councils in the UK’s main urban centres, the council is run by the Labour Party.

Birmingham Library was forced to request extra voluntary assistance and to plead for donations of recently published books from the public, after their book-buying fund was “paused.”

Figures from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) revealed that UK library expenditure on books, newspapers, periodicals and magazines fell by 10.6 percent within a year, from £72 million in 2013/14 to £64 million in 2014/15.

According to the data, funding to local libraries was slashed by £180 million in the same period and the number of visits to public libraries has fallen by 14 percent since the election of Prime Minister David Cameron’s government in 2010. Book borrowing has steadily declined in every year since 2010.

In a comment during an interview with the BBC, children’s author Alan Gibbons stated, “Councils learnt early on how unpopular simply closing libraries is so they have had to cut the vital service in other, less obvious ways. It can come across in many forms: reduced opening hours, reduced book fund, reduced maintenance and reduced staffing. … It is harmful to the service, creating the risk that once-loyal users of libraries will come away disappointed and stop using them. Our public library system used to be envy of the world. Now it is used as a cautionary tale that librarians use worldwide to scare their colleagues.”

At a time of growing poverty, unemployment and homelessness, public libraries are one of the few free services used by millions of working class people in Britain.

Economic crisis heightens social tensions in Venezuela

Alexander Fangmann

The fall in oil prices resulting from the deepening recessionary trends in the world economy has driven Venezuela into a deep crisis, creating an increasingly explosive political situation. As workers are being thrown into poverty by inflation and seeing a deep erosion in their living standards, the US-backed right wing, which is now in control of the National Assembly, is plotting to remove the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

From over $100 per barrel in June of 2014, the price of Venezuelan oil has fallen to about $30 per barrel, about $5 per barrel under the OPEC basket price, reflecting increased refining and blending costs that Venezuela’s “heavy” crude requires in order to be sold on the global market.

This has sharply reduced government revenue, approximately 45 percent of which is derived from oil exports. Because oil—amounting to 96 percent of total exports—is the main source of the US dollars used for foreign exchange in Venezuela, the government no longer has the funds to continue financing imports of a wide variety of products. This has led to severe shortages of all kinds of goods, ranging from food and personal care products, to necessary medicines and industrial supplies.

Food scarcity has become much more common throughout the country, with surveys estimating scarcity of 50 to 80 percent of the food products, and 87 percent of Venezuelans saying they are buying less food. The availability of pasteurized milk is down 95 percent, while powdered milk is down 80 percent. Venezuela only produces 35 percent of the milk and meat it consumes, and food imports in general have tripled over the past ten years over previous levels.

Aside from food, the health care system is in a state of near collapse from a lack of drugs and supplies. It is estimated that 80 percent of all medicine is scarce or unavailable, with Venezuelans now taking to Twitter and other social media sites to make requests for specific needed drugs. Others are attempting to cross the now-closed border into neighboring Colombia for treatment. It is also reported that 80 percent of first aid centers have shut down. The availability of condoms is also down 90 percent. When they are found, prices have inflated beyond affordability.

Inflation, already significantly eroding working class living standards, is set to reach levels that will likely throw even wider layers into poverty. The Venezuelan Central Bank’s own estimates put inflation at around 140 percent for 2015, about 40 percent less than the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) estimate. An estimate of inflation conducted by Bloomberg, based on the opinion of 12 economists, suggested 184 percent inflation for the current year, while the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Director Alejandro Werner, and some other analysts, think the number may reach as high as 720 percent.

The IMF also estimates that the economy contracted 10 percent in 2015, and expects a similar contraction for 2016. This would be the worst economic contraction suffered by any country, with the next two worse economic contractions being Brazil and Greece at 3.8 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. Though the IMF’s estimates are worse than those of the World Bank and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean of 7 percent decreases for both 2015 and 2016, either figure speaks to a startling decrease in economic activity.

To make matters worse, Venezuela, including the capital Caracas, have been hit recently with regular power outages. Venezuela derives 65 percent of its electricity from the Guri Dam, but low water levels resulting from the El Niño weather pattern have lowered production levels. In response to protests following recurrent blackouts, Maduro extended the Easter holiday last week to five days in order to conserve power.

This has also affected the availability of running water, as the water pumps necessary for water flow to homes and businesses are also dependent on electricity. This in turn has exacerbated a Zika virus outbreak in the country. Zika has already infected around 400,000 people, as Venezuelans have resorted to storing water in buckets and canisters, creating breeding grounds for mosquitos.

The response by the Maduro government to the crisis has been to continually lay the entirety of the blame on the right-wing, US-backed opposition. This position, which was recently defended in an essay by Peter Bolton of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), is summarized as the “economic war thesis,” or the idea that “business sectors friendly to the opposition are waging an aggressive and protracted campaign of economic sabotage to deliberately stir up social unrest to destabilize and discredit the governing Chavista bloc and in the ensuing chaos bring about an end to the PSUV government and the installation of a new one made up of opposition parties.”

It is certainly true that the parties of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) are working closely with the US government to destabilize the Maduro government. In fact, following legislative elections in which the MUD gained a majority in the National Assembly, leaders indicated they would give themselves six months to find a “democratic, peaceful, and electoral solution” but threatened that the government was “doing everything possible to give itself a coup.”

Given the history of the United States in backing coups by extreme right-wing governments throughout Latin America, there is a grave danger to the working class represented by recent political developments.

However, the meddling of the MUD and US government is not the main source of the crisis, which is not unique to Venezuela. Other countries in Latin America have also been engulfed by crisis—Brazil, Argentina, and a host of other countries throughout the world, including the United States itself. Rather, it is the economic crisis itself which is driving the United States to reassert its dominion over Latin America as part of its “pivot to Asia,” in a bid to drive out what it sees as substantial incursions into the hemisphere by China.

The crisis has completely exposed the socialist pretensions of the bourgeois nationalist government of Maduro and his predecessor Hugo Chávez. Sixteen years of “Bolivarian socialism” have left Venezuela completely dependent on the gyrations of the capitalist market. Moreover, the government’s response to the deepening crisis is to intensify the attacks on the living standards of the Venezuelan working class.

A defense of democratic and social rights in the face of both the attacks of the government and the very real danger of a coup attempt by the right requires the independent mobilization of the working class, separate from the PSUV and the bourgeois opposition parties.

Obama’s nuclear summit underscores danger of war

Peter Symonds

US President Barack Obama yesterday concluded the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, involving more than 50 countries, with a bland statement highlighting his presidency’s supposed achievements in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. In reality, the Obama administration has greatly heightened, not lessened, the danger that nuclear devices will be used.

The summit was held under the banner of the “war on terror,” with the supposed purpose of engendering international collaboration in preventing Al Qaeda or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) gaining access to nuclear weapons. “There is no doubt that if these madmen ever got their hands on a nuclear bomb or nuclear material they most certainly would use it to kill as many innocent people as possible,” Obama declared.

The greatest danger confronting humanity, however, is not that ISIS or Al Qaeda will obtain and use nuclear weapons, but rather that the madmen in the White House have recklessly inflamed flashpoints in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia, setting the stage for a catastrophic conflict between nuclear-armed powers.

So acrimonious are relations between Washington and Moscow that Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to attend the summit. On the eve of the gathering, the US military announced that by February 2017, it plans to maintain a “permanent footprint” of three armoured brigades in Eastern Europe in NATO countries bordering Russia.

In the Middle East, using the pretext of combating ISIS, the US and its allies are engaged in a dangerous confrontation with Russia to oust Moscow’s ally—the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The potential for a military clash was underscored last November when NATO ally, Turkey, shot down a Russian aircraft that allegedly intruded briefly into its airspace—a provocation undoubtedly sanctioned by Washington.

The absence of Russia from the summit highlights its fraudulent character. The US and Russia together hold 90 percent of the world’s nuclear bombs—a huge arsenal of around 10,000 warheads in service—making a mockery of Obama’s “vision of a world without nuclear weapons.” The aim of Washington’s “non-proliferation” policy is not to rid the globe of nuclear bombs but to ensure the US retains its dominant position over any potential rival, including Russia.

The White House’s chief focus at the nuclear summit was on China. When Obama met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines on Thursday, the tensions were palpable. In a comment in the Washington Postthe previous day, the US president flagged “North Korea’s continued provocations” as “unfinished business.” While China and the US agreed on the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, Xi “firmly opposed” the Pentagon’s plans to base a Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.

Since coming to office, Obama has stymied any resumption of six-party talks to eliminate North Korea’s weapons and facilities. Instead, he has repeatedly exploited flare-ups on the Korean Peninsula to justify the US military build-up in South Korea and Japan, as part of its broader “pivot to Asia” against China.

Despite US assurances to the contrary, the anti-ballistic missile system is primarily directed against China, not North Korea. While the constant drumbeat from Washington is about the “threat” posed by China’s military expansion, the US has overwhelming superiority in the sophistication and size of its nuclear arsenal—some 5,000 warheads in service, compared to an estimated 260 for China.

Moreover, while promoted as a defensive weapon, the THAAD system is part of the Pentagon’s efforts to achieve “nuclear primacy” over any rival. Unlike China, the United States has never ruled out a nuclear first strike. The THAAD systems are to ensure any Chinese weapons that are not destroyed in a pre-emptive US nuclear attack can be shot down before reaching any American targets.

Xi and Obama also traded diplomatic blows over the South China Sea. Before their meeting, US officials again accused China of “militarising” islets under its control and warned against any declaration of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ). On Wednesday, Deputy Defence Secretary Robert Work branded an ADIZ as “destabilising,” saying the US would not recognise it. In 2012, the Pentagon flew nuclear-capable B-52 bombers into the East China Sea after Beijing announced an ADIZ in that region.

The rising instability in the South China Sea is a direct consequence of the actions of Washington, which has encouraged countries like the Philippines and Vietnam to aggressively press their maritime claims against China. Over the past year, the US has repeatedly condemned China’s land reclamation and “expansionism” in the South China Sea. On two occasions—last October and again in January—the US dispatched US navy destroyers to conduct “freedom of navigation” operations within the 12-nautical-mile territorial limit around Chinese-administered islets.

According to the New York Times, Obama on Thursday again pressed Xi “on China’s construction of military facilities in the South China Sea.” In response, Xi told Obama he hoped Washington would “strictly” abide by its commitment not to take a position on the territorial disputes and “adopt an objective and impartial attitude.” According to China’s Xinhua news agency, Xi warned that Beijing would not accept violations of its sovereignty in the name of “freedom of navigation.”

This week, the New York Times provided another example of propaganda posing as journalism, with first-hand accounts from an embedded reporter on board a US navy cruiser in the South China Sea. The on-the-spot reporting made clear that US military encounters with Chinese forces are now routine in the South China Sea. Each of these encounters poses the danger of a miscalculation leading to an armed clash and a wider conflict.

The New York Times article on Thursday, entitled “Patrolling disputed waters, US and China jockey for dominance,” reported a conversation overheard two weeks ago between Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, General Joseph Dunford, and Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Pacific Command. “Would you go to war over Scarborough Shoals [reefs claimed by China and the Philippines]?” Dunford asked. The reply was not heard.

Whether the answer was yes or no, the fact that two of the US military’s most senior commanders were casually discussing war with China is revealing in itself. Moreover, there is an inherent logic to Washington’s escalation of tensions in Asia. Were the US to refuse to back the Philippines over the Scarborough Shoals, or Japan over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islets, or South Korea over an incident with North Korea, the whole web of US alliances in Asia and internationally would be called into question.

It is this underlying dynamic, notwithstanding Obama’s posturing at the Nuclear Security Summit, that poses the very real danger of a nuclear war.

The social crisis and the US elections

Barry Grey

There has been considerable discussion in the media about the deep social anger among working people and youth toward the entire political establishment that has found expression in the US election campaign. The broad and unanticipated support for nominally anti-establishment candidates—the quasi-fascist billionaire Donald Trump on the right and the self-described “socialist” Bernie Sanders on the left—has evoked outbursts of incredulity and ire that have only underscored the chasm that separates the entire ruling establishment from the general population.

The combination of cluelessness and contempt that prevails in top circles was summed up in early March by President Barack Obama following the release of last month’s employment report, which showed a larger-than-expected gain in payrolls for February. Saying the report was a vindication of his economic policies, which had made the US economy “the envy of the world,” Obama derided what he called “an alternative reality out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the dumps.” On the contrary, he gushed, “America is pretty darn great right now.”

He failed to mention one figure in the report that pointed starkly to the social catastrophe lurking behind the headline job number: Only 11.7 percent of the new jobs created in February were full-time. This on top of the fact that the vast majority of the new jobs were low-wage service-sector positions, many of them temporary. Employment in manufacturing and mining continued to fall.

The administration’s response to Friday’s tepid jobs report for March—which again recorded declines in manufacturing and mining and a preponderance of new jobs in cheap labor sectors, with part-time and temp positions accounting for a huge proportion of these—was similar.

Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez boasted, “The remarkable US recovery continues… The wind is once again at our back.” Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, declared, “The private sector has now added 14.4 million jobs over 73 straight months of job growth, the longest streak on record.”

But what kind of jobs? A new report released this week demonstrates that under first the Bush and then the Obama administrations, the whole structure of employment in America has been radically altered to reduce the status of workers to that of a super-exploited casual and contingent labor force, lacking any job security or health and retirement benefits.

The report, by Princeton University and the RAND Corporation, documents the fact that all net full-time job growth in the US between 2005 and 2015 was accounted for by “alternative work arrangements,” i.e., people working as independent contractors, temps, through contract firms or on-call. There were actually fewer conventional full-time positions—by 400,000—in 2015 than a decade earlier.

One particularly revealing indication of the brutal conditions facing growing sections of workers is the fact that the proportion of contingent workers holding multiple jobs has more than quadrupled over the past 10 years, from 7.3 percent in 2005 to 32 percent in 2015. Nearly one-third of people working with no benefits or job security are holding down an additional part-time or full-time job just to make ends meet.

Another report released this week, this one by the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides further insight into the conditions facing low-income workers that are fueling anti-establishment and anti-capitalist sentiment. Entitled “Household Expenditures and Income,” the study reports that housing costs for the lower third of income groups in the US rose 33 percent between 2013 and 2014, the biggest annual jump in housing spending for the 19 years that Pew has studied the question.

With spending on transportation and food also rising, 2014 became the first year studied by Pew in which median spending on these basic necessities surpassed median income. By 2014, median income had fallen by 13 percent from 2004 levels, while expenditures had increased by 14 percent.

These exposures of the social crisis follow a series of earlier reports showing a sharp increase in life span divergences between the rich and the poor and a dramatic decline in life expectancy for poor middle-aged Americans, rising death rates for both young and middle-aged white workers and a reversal of decades of declining infant mortality.

The indignation and frustration born of such conditions are intensified by the utter complacency and indifference of the political establishment, particularly the Obama administration and what passes for the “left” in official politics, grouped around the Democratic Party.

This was on full display in an op-ed piece by economist and New York Timescolumnist Paul Krugman published on Friday. Entitled “Learning from Obama” and including a blowout saying, “What progressive success looks like,” the article exemplifies the outlook of the privileged and smug upper-middle class social layers that make up the base of the Democratic Party.

In a thoroughly dishonest panegyric to Obama’s economic and social policies, which he credits with creating 10 million jobs and enacting progressive health and financial “reform,” Krugman ignores the record growth of social inequality under Obama, whose policies have accelerated the process by which the share of national income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled, increasing from about 8 percent in the 1960s and 1970s to more than 20 percent today.

Krugman praises as working to “tax the rich, help the less fortunate and rein in the excesses of the market” an administration that has funneled trillions to Wall Street while pushing wage and pension cuts for workers (the auto bailout, the Detroit bankruptcy), reduced health benefits and increased out-of-pocket costs for millions of workers (Obamacare) and enabled the biggest banks to strengthen their grip on the economy.

Behind the lies of Krugman and others like him is contempt and outright hatred for the working class. This is commonly articulated by the “liberal” establishment and its pseudo-left hangers-on in the form of denunciations of the “white working class”—in keeping with their reactionary obsession with racial and identity politics. They either ignore the broad support for Sanders from white workers who are attracted to what they mistakenly believe or hope to be a socialist campaign, or equate it with support for Trump among more backward layers—branding it as an expression of “white privilege.”

Kevin Williamson, writing in the right-wing National Review, recently gave vent in unadulterated form to the anti-working class outlook of these social layers, stating: “The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible… the white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.”

Behind the crisis of the American two-party system revealed in the 2016 elections is a vast class polarization and political radicalization of the working class. Trump reflects the turn of the financial mafia of which he is a part toward fascistic politics. He has been able to attract support from certain sections of the working class primarily because of the viciously anti-working class policies of Obama and the Democrats.

The many more workers moving to support Sanders are looking for a genuinely radical and socialist alternative to capitalism. They will not find it in the Vermont senator, whose campaign is not an expression of working class militancy and radicalization, but rather the response of sections of the ruling class to the danger posed by this development. His conscious aim is to preempt the emergence of an independent political movement of workers and youth and suffocate social opposition by channeling it back behind the Democratic Party.

None of the candidates in any serious way discuss the real issues before American working people—and workers all over the world: the rising danger of world war, the growth of social inequality and the movement toward dictatorship. These issues must be brought into the election campaign as part of the struggle to build an international socialist movement of the working class against war and imperialism.

Chinese mineworkers arrested after protest on unpaid wages

John Ward

Police at Shuangyashan in China’s northeastern province of Heilongjiang have detained more than 30 mineworkers who led large protests in early March over unpaid wages. The police crackdown points to fears in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership of social unrest amid a slowing economy and plans for mass sackings in basic industries.

The protests had erupted during the National People’s Congress after Heilongjiang provincial governor Lu Hao told a press conference that all the workers employed by the large state-owned Longmay Mining Group had been paid in full. Banners at the protests read: “We want to live, we want to eat.” According to Reuters, the protests were called off after a day when the company offered to pay two months’ wages.

The protests were deeply embarrassing for Lu, a member of the CCP Central Committee and touted as a potential Politburo member. He was compelled to admit that he had been wrong and promised to ensure workers would be paid in full. Lu blamed the company for withholding information and promised to “severely punish” anyone who did so again.

As the arrests make clear, Lu’s main aim is to ensure that there are no more protests. A worker named Chen told Agence France Presse that miners were still owed more than 60 percent of their wages from 2014 and 2015. He declined to give his full name because of fear of reprisals. “The miners don’t dare protest anymore,” he said.

The government has plans for mass layoffs in the coal industry. The China National Coal Association has estimated that 5,600 coal mines, more than half of all mines in China, will close in the next five years. About 1,000 mines will close this year. At the start of March, employment minister Yin Weimin said 1.3 million jobs would be axed in the coal industry.

The government has announced a 100 billion yuan ($US15.5 billion) fund to retrain and relocate sacked coal and steel workers. But Reuters reported last week that the projected costs for laying off 1.3 million coal miners alone are as much as 195 billion yuan.

The situation facing workers in the “rust belt” northeastern provinces, with a large number of older coal mines, is particularly dire. Longmay, the largest state-owned enterprise in Heilongjiang, announced last year it would sack 100,000 workers out of a workforce of 248,000. One worker from Hegang, also in Heilongjiang, told the Sydney Morning Herald in January: “There are no prospects here... All I want is for my son to go out when he’s older. There isn’t much hope in this place.”

Lu Hao has been tipped as a rising political star. He is the youngest provincial governor and was the youngest full member of the CCP Central Committee when appointed. Born in 1967, he was leader of the Chinese Youth League, a post also held by current Premier Li Keqiang and former President Hu Jintao. Lu was appointed at the age of 28 as the manager of a debt-ridden wool company, becoming the youngest director of a state-owned factory.

Lu’s “success” at restructuring the wool factory brought him to the attention of the CCP leadership. But one former worker told the South China Morning Post: “Lu didn’t manage the factory well. The factory wasn’t profitable but it became a showcase for higher leaders, so it only looked good on the surface.” Lu was profiled last November in the Economist, which noted his “work ethic” and “solid record,” as well as his promotion by the People ’ s Daily and other major state-owned papers.

Lu was installed as governor of Heilongjiang in 2013, no doubt to manage the mass layoffs that were looming and to deal with the resulting social and economic dislocation. Clearly his public embarrassment at China’s most significant annual political gathering by protesting workers could not go unanswered.

The arrests in Heilongjiang are not an isolated incident. Also in March, eight construction workers in Sichuan Province were detained and publicly shamed over a protest they organised of hundreds of workers last August to demand unpaid wages. According to the Wall Street Journal, the eight workers were charged with “obstructing official business,” found guilty and sentenced to jail terms of six to eight months.

The authorities sought to make an example of the workers for the “crime” of demanding their wages. The Langzhong Municipal Court organised a public rally where the eight were paraded on a platform in order “to educate the public on how to lawfully protect their rights.” Their cases were read aloud as the workers stood flanked by two police.

This spectacle provoked a popular backlash on social media. One comment declared: “Don’t take the public for fools. You think the people don’t understand your purpose in using public sentencing? Let me tell you this: public sentiment is not to be bullied!” The court subsequently removed the notice from the web site and said it was conducting an investigation.

These incidents are part of a growing wave of strikes and protests across China. According to the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, of the 2,913 protests and strikes in the past 12 months, arrests took place in 170 cases. Of these, 95 arrests were in the past six months. Eighty-one percent of the protests and strikes have been about wage arrears.

Data from the bulletin’s web site, which relies on social media reports, shows that since the start of this year there have been almost 800 protests and strikes. In March alone, five incidents involved more than 1,000 workers, including the protests in Shuangyashan.

At the end of the National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang claimed that structural economic reform and the elimination of huge excess capacities in basic industries would proceed without mass layoffs. The notion that millions of steel workers and coal miners are going to be absorbed in service industries, even as the economy continues to slow, is absurd. The recent arrests are a warning of the methods that the CCP will use to deal with resistance by workers to the job destruction being prepared on a mass scale.

Australian government in disarray over spending cuts

Mike Head

Within two days, severe cracks have appeared in the latest extraordinary effort by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government to break through a political impasse and impose sweeping cuts to health, education and other social spending.

Turnbull’s plan—suddenly announced on Wednesday at a football game, without any detail whatsoever—to hand back income taxing powers to the states, is blatantly designed to shift the blame for devastating and deeply unpopular cuts onto state and territory governments.

Turnbull declared that by returning the taxing powers that they had relinquished in 1942, during World War II, to the state governments, the latter would be forced to take “responsibility” for funding public hospitals and schools. “If the states had to raise all of the money they spend themselves,” he said, “they would spend that money much more wisely.”

The prime minister made clear that the $80 billion slashed in 2014 by his predecessor, Tony Abbott, from federal funding to the states over the next decade for public hospitals and schools, would be maintained. He then went further, announcing his intention to scrap all federal government funding for public schools and hand it over to the states. Federal government financing of private schools, many of which cater to the sons and daughters of the super-rich, would, however, continue.

As for public hospitals, Turnbull declared he would give the states only an extra $3 billion until 2020, a tiny fraction of the $57 billion budget shortfall for the sector over the next decade. Last December, Turnbull promised the states that his government would increase the level of federal funding to 50 percent of state hospital costs, but has reneged on that pledge, indicating that the share would now be kept at 45 percent, well below the rising costs of healthcare.

Turnbull boasted that his state-taxing scheme was the greatest restructuring of the Australian federation in 70 years. In reality, it is yet another desperate attempt by the prime minister to demonstrate to the financial and corporate elite that his leadership can deliver what Abbott failed to: deep cuts to public spending, lower corporate taxes and further reductions in wages and working conditions.

This was Turnbull’s second dramatic manoeuvre in just two weeks. It followed last month’s sudden decision to trigger a double dissolution election of both houses of parliament in order to break a deadlock in the Senate, where opposition parties and so-called independents, posturing as opponents of austerity, have blocked key budget measures. If the move succeeds, the next federal election, due between August 2016 and March 2017, will be brought forward to July, clearing the way for a post-election austerity offensive.

Today Turnbull met with state and territory leaders for a Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting in Canberra to discuss his ultimatum. There were clear signs of rifts within his Liberal-National Coalition, just six months after he ousted Abbott.

The instability within his own ranks was highlighted yesterday when Treasurer Scott Morrison flatly contradicted Turnbull’s initial suggestion that states could possibly lift their taxation rates to fund necessary public services. Morrison said he would “guarantee” that the states could not do so for some years. He outlined a “transitional phase” for at least the next three-year term of parliament, during which the states would be prohibited from increasing the level of income tax. Turnbull had made no mention of any such transitional arrangement.

Morrison, who is tasked with handing down the government’s budget on May 3, after Turnbull suddenly brought the date forward by a week, was evidently not consulted before the prime minister unveiled his “federation restructuring.”

According to media reports, Turnbull’s plan was drawn up in the Prime Minister’s Department, not the Treasury. The latter has advocated more direct measures to reduce the burgeoning budget deficit, namely, the slashing of public spending in order to enable the government to cut corporate taxes.

In January, Treasury secretary John Fraser opened the political year with a speech insisting that major cuts to social programs—notably pensions, welfare benefits and disability care—be imposed because of the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, globally and in Australia.

Fraser declared that the country’s AAA rating by global credit agencies was in jeopardy unless cuts were made urgently. This was primarily due to the haemorrhaging of tax revenues as a result of the falling prices for Australia’s main exports, especially iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas.

There is no difference between Turnbull and Morrison on the need to impose the burden of this sharp economic reversal on the working class. But the acute dilemma that has confronted the government, like the six-year Labor government before it, is how to inflict such cuts under conditions where widespread hostility exists among millions of ordinary people toward the austerity measures.

There is increasing visible nervousness within ruling circles about Turnbull’s evident failure to live up to his promise of delivering more effective political salesmanship than Abbott.

Today’s editorial in Murdoch’s Australian praised the Coalition’s intention to cut spending by “encouraging discipline” on the part of the states but said it was “unnerving that such a landmark proposal comes from the Prime Minister on the sidelines of a rugby league media event two days before a meeting with the premiers and in the second week of an unofficial election campaign.”

Noting that Turnbull and his Treasurer “didn’t seem to co-ordinate their message,” the newspaper stated: “[H]ere we have a sketchy idea, informally announced and, so far, poorly explained. Serious economic reform demands more considered advocacy.”

Similar complaints were made of Abbott and his Treasurer, Joe Hockey, before their sudden removal from office.

Driving these tensions is a volatile and rapidly worsening economic situation. The 20-year mining boom that sustained Australian capitalism has been unraveling since 2011, under the deepening impact of the 2008 global financial breakdown, a marked slowdown in China and the recessions gripping Japan, Europe and every resource export-dependent economy.

Over the past two years, the collapse of the resources boom, while hitting the mining states of Western Australia and Queensland particularly hard, was partly offset by an unsustainable housing bubble, especially in Sydney and Melbourne.

Soaring house prices, combined with falling real wages, have placed home ownership increasingly out of the reach of working-class families, while sending household debt levels to the highest in the world. Housing debt per adult increased by 136 percent from 2004 to 2015, according to data released this week by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, taking the total debt to $1.9 trillion.

This bubble is showing signs of bursting. Housing construction has begun to decline over the past half year and recent figures point to falling apartment prices. These trends have major implications for state governments, whose budgets already show aggregate annual deficits of about $10 billion, alongside the federal government’s $38 billion, despite being propped up by property-related taxes.

Shares in major Australian banks have fallen by around 30 percent over the past year, and have fluctuated wildly again this week, on fears of their exposure to a housing crash and to mining losses, as well as to increasing instability on Chinese and other Asian markets.

Temps and contractors accounted for all US job growth since 2005

Patrick Martin

All US job growth for the last decade came in “alternative work arrangements”—people working as independent contractors, temps, through contract agencies or on-call—according to a study published Tuesday by Princeton University and the RAND Corporation.

The proportion of the workforce in such contingent arrangements rose sharply from 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent in 2015. That means that nearly one in six full-time workers was in a contingent status, usually without job security, health benefits, vacations and other paid time off. Many contract workers are not even paid for legal public holidays.

Source: Authors calculations based on Bureau of Labor Statistics CWS 1995 and 2005 and Rand-Princeton CWS 2015.

The actual number of contingent full-time workers rose from 14.2 million in February 2005 to 23.6 million in November 2015, an increase of 9.4 million. Since total US employment rose by 9.1 million during this period, the number of workers in conventional, full-time positions actually dropped by nearly 400,000. Neither figure includes part-time employment, which has likewise become far more widespread over the past decade.

As the study’s authors emphasize, “A striking implication of these estimates is that all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements.” They add, with some understatement, “It appears that as of late 2015, the labor market had not yet fully recovered from the huge loss of traditional jobs from the Great Recession.”

According to the Princeton report, all four categories of nonstandard work increased from 2005 to 2015, with independent contractors remaining the largest group, at 8.9 percent of all workers, but the proportion of workers in the other three categories more than doubling, from 3.2 percent in 2005 to 7.3 percent. Contract workers—those employed by a contracting agency that supplies them to the company where they actually work—quintupled, from 0.6 percent of workers in 2005 to 3.1 percent in 2015.

The study found significant changes in both the occupational and demographic characteristics of the contingent workforce. In 1995 and 2005 surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, construction and office services were the two largest employers of contingent workers, each accounting for about one-fifth of the total.

In 2015, however, in the wake of the collapse of home construction following the subprime mortgage debacle, construction jobs had fallen to only 7 percent of the contingent work force. In its place, education and health care had become the largest single employer, accounting for 21.9 percent. This coincides with a dramatic decline in the social position of education workers, with mass layoffs of teachers and other school employees.

According to the study, “Occupational groups experiencing particularly large increases in the nonstandard work from 2005 to 2015 include computer and mathematical, community and social services, education, health care, legal, protective services, personal care, and transportation jobs.”

The age structure of the contingent workforce has shifted as well, and not in the way that might be expected from conventional media coverage of the economy. Only 6.4 percent of young workers, aged 16 to 24, were employed in alternative work arrangements in 2015, about the same as in 2005. This reflects the reality that the super-exploitation of the vast majority of young workers is done through part-time working rather than contingent forms of full-time working.

For workers in prime working years, aged 25-54, 14.3 percent had alternative work arrangements in 2015, while the figure for those aged 55-74 rose to 23.9 percent, nearly one in every four workers in the oldest age bracket. Both figures were sharply up from 2005 and 1995.

One additional figure is particularly startling: the proportion of contingent workers holding multiple jobs. This figure has more than quadrupled over the past 10 years, from 7.3 percent in 2005 to a staggering 32 percent in 2015. This demonstrates the nearly unbearable stress affecting this section of the working class: in addition to a full-time job with no benefits or job security, one-third are working at another part-time or full-time job to make ends meet.

These bare figures provide a better picture of the economic and social reality of working-class life in America in 2016 than all the self-congratulatory speeches of Obama administration officials, or the puffery of their media apologists, hailing the US “economic recovery” that supposedly began in 2009.

This recovery has been a bonanza for the wealthy and the Wall Street moneymen, but the social position of the working class has been steadily eroded under Obama. This is not an incidental byproduct, but the deliberate aim and goal of administration policy, beginning with the auto industry bailout, based on slashing the wages of new hires by 50 percent.

Doing the bidding of Corporate America, the Obama administration pushed through a health care “reform” program to cut costs for business and the government. A major aspect of the Affordable Care Act was to offer the pretense of health care coverage for the rapidly growing army of contingent workers unable to obtain insurance through the traditional employer-based system.

As the New York Times noted Thursday in a commentary on the Princeton report, the shift to nontraditional employment “has profound implications on social insurance. More so than in many advanced countries, employers in the United States carry a lot of the burden of protecting their workers from the things that can go wrong in life. They frequently provide health insurance, and paid medical leave for employees who become ill. They pay for workers’ compensation insurance for people who are injured on the job, and unemployment insurance benefits for those who are laid off. They help fund their workers’ existence after retirement, at one time through pensions, now more commonly through 401(k) plans.”

By and large, contractors, temporary workers, and those hired through contract agencies have no access to these benefits and must bear all the costs of social insurance themselves. For the vast majority, this simply means doing without. Under the measures of the Affordable Care Act, they would be required to purchase insurance from private companies or face a fine.

The study, titled, “The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995-2015,” was conducted by Lawrence Katz of Harvard and Alan Krueger of Princeton, and involved a survey of more than 6,000 workers last November.

RAND Corporation underwrote the survey as a replacement for the Contingent Worker Surveys that were conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1995 and 2005. The survey was discontinued under the Bush administration, which sought to reduce the amount of information available on the conditions of working class life. While justified on right-wing ideological grounds—ending “unnecessary” government spending—the real goal was to conceal the savage impact of the actions of giant corporations in cutting jobs, wages and benefits.