Share market boom masks another financial crisis in the making

Nick Beams

Wall Street stock market indexes are set to finish the year at or near record highs in marked contrast to the end of 2018 when they experienced their worst December since 1931 in the midst of the Great Depression.

The rise and rise of stock prices over the course of the year—the S&P 500 is up by more than 29 percent—has been the principal factor in the further escalation of the wealth of the ultra-rich with Bloomberg reporting that their net worth has risen by $1.25 trillion, or 25 percent.

Trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

The escalation of the financial markets, however, is not an expression of economic health. Rather, the social disease of ever-rising inequality, coupled with worsening wages and living standards for millions, is the contradictory expression of a gathering crisis located at the very heart of the financial system itself.

The year 2019 will go down in economic history as the great turnaround when the world’s major central banks gave up on their attempt to return to “normal” monetary policy after pumping trillions of dollars into the global financial system in response to the crisis of 2008–9.

These extraordinary actions, rewarding the very banks and financial institutions whose speculative and in some cases outright criminal activities had sparked the crisis, were justified on the basis that they were necessary to save the entire system. When the crisis passed, it was maintained, such “unconventional” monetary policies would cease and there would be a return to “normal.”

But it has become clear over the course of the past decade that this day will never come because, like a drug addict, the entire global financial system has become completely dependent on the supply of ultra-cheap money for the accumulation of profit.

To give the US Federal Reserve its due it did make an attempt to at least restrict the supply. It carried out four interest rates rises in 2018, on the back of a slight upturn in the US and global economy and foreshadowed more of the same in 2019. It even committed itself to start winding down its massive holdings of financial assets which, as a result of quantitative easing, had expanded to more than $4 trillion from $800 billion in 2007.

The violent reaction of Wall Street to these measures at the end of 2018, amid denunciations of the Fed by President Trump, meant that even these limited measures were shelved. The underlying weakness of the US economy and the fragility of the financial system, where corporate debt has risen close to a record $10 trillion (equivalent to 47 percent of the total economy) and some 50 percent of corporate bonds are rated at BBB (just above junk status), meant it could not sustain a base interest rate above the historically low rate of 2.5 percent.

Fed chairman Powell started the year by making clear there would be no rates rises and in July made the first of what were to be three interest rate cuts for the year. The winding down of asset holdings was halted. These actions have been duplicated by the European Central Bank which has further cut its base interest this year and resumed its asset purchases, adding to the €2.6 trillion stock it already holds, while the Bank of Japan continues its quantitative easing program.

The Fed has not officially resumed quantitative easing but it has intervened aggressively in the short-term financial market following a spike in the overnight repo rate last September. The repo market is crucial to the day-to-day functioning of the financial system as financial institutions borrow money overnight to close their books at the end of the trading day. Under normal conditions, the repo interest rate tracks the Fed’s base rate. But in mid-September it spiked to as high as 10 percent.

Since then the Fed has intervened to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and reversed more than half the previous reduction of its asset portfolio.

One of the most significant effects of central bank policy has been in the market for government bonds. It has been said that 2019 was the year when bond market logic was turned on its head. Bond markets have traditionally functioned as an arena for virtually risk-free investment at a relatively low rate of return. Their operations have formed the basis for investments by pension funds and insurance companies that have to balance their long-term liabilities with secure assets.

But in the middle of this year the mass of bonds yielding negative yields reached $17 trillion. Since then the amount of bonds with negative yields has fallen to $12 trillion, but this is still far beyond anything that has occurred in the past.

A negative yield occurs when the price of a bond in the market has gone so high that if an investor purchased it and held it to maturity they would make a loss. Of course, under those conditions investors do not buy bonds in order to hold them to maturity. They do so in anticipation that prices will rise even further and they will be able to sell them and make a capital gain. And the converse applies. If interest rates rise and the price of the bond falls (the two move in the opposite direction) the investors will make a loss.

The emergence of negative yields in bond markets as a result of central bank monetary policies is the expression of a financial bubble in an area of the market that had previously provided some stability.

In a recent comment on Bloomberg entitled “When the ultimate refuge turns risky,” financial analyst Satyaijit Das noted: “Until the financial crisis of 2008, government bonds were the traditional haven for investors. More than a decade on, their nature has fundamentally changed. In any future crisis, sovereign debt will be a propagator of risk rather than a refuge.”

He warned that despite record low interest rates and low inflation the risk on these supposedly safe assets was increasing. Once they provided risk-free returns. Now, with yields at record lows, they provide only return-free risks.

The danger is that problems in the credit worthiness of government bonds of any country can rapidly be transmitted throughout the financial system as losses on bond holdings create selling pressure leading to rising debt costs. In a recent report, the World Bank pointed to a “global debt wave” that had led to the growth of debt in emerging market economies to a “towering” $55 trillion—the largest in history. Emerging markets are not the only source of potential instability. In the advanced economies government debt has risen to more than 100 percent of gross domestic product compared to 70 percent in 2007.

The significance of the debt bubble in government bonds emerges in clearer focus when it is viewed in the context of the financial crises of the past three decades. The stock market crash of October 1987, when Wall Street experienced its largest one day fall in history, was the result of a share price bubble. Then came the Asian crisis of 1997–98, set off by an emerging market bubble. It was followed by the collapse of the tech bubble in the early 2000s and then the financial crash of 2008–9, sparked by a bubble in the housing market which resulted in a crisis with the onset of recessionary trends at the end of 2007.

Now there is a bubble in the market for government bonds, which in previous periods has functioned as the bedrock of the financial system. Moreover, the world’s major central banks are directly involved because of their purchases of government bonds over the past decade. As Das noted: “It is ironic that actions taken to preserve the system and a key instrument—government bonds—now pose a key threat to financial stability.”

The financial oligarchy go into the New Year celebrating their massive accumulation of wealth and the so-called mainstream media will continue to maintain the fiction that the US and, by extension, the global economy, remain sound. But the reality is that the seeds of another financial catastrophe have not only been planted but are rapidly germinating.

Iran, Russia and China hold joint naval drills in Indian Ocean amid US war threats

Alex Lantier

Iranian, Russian and Chinese warships are finishing today a four-day naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman, near the Iranian coast and the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The exercise marked the first time that Moscow and Beijing sent warships for joint maneuvers with Iranian forces in the Indian Ocean.

A warship sails while approaching Iran's southeastern port city of Chahbahar, in the Gulf of Oman. Iran's navy on Friday kicked off the first joint naval drill with Russia and China in the northern part of the Indian Ocean. (Iranian Army via AP)

The chief of the Iranian fleet participating in the exercise, Rear Admiral Gholamreza Tahani, said that its purpose was to demonstrate the close relations between Iran, Russia and China. “The message of this exercise is peace, friendship and lasting security through cooperation and unity, and its effect will be to show that Iran cannot be isolated,” Tahani said. He added, “Us hosting these powers shows that our relations have reached a meaningful point and may have an international impact.”

The exercises were in fact a signal sent to ruling circles in Washington and in the imperialist capitals in Europe that a US-led war with Iran could rapidly escalate into a direct, all-out conflict involving the world’s major nuclear powers.

In June, after Iran shot down a US drone over its territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, Trump tweeted that he had aborted US missile strikes ten minutes before they were to begin. With Iran, Russia and China all facing stepped-up military threats and pressure from Washington, Beijing and Moscow decided to send warships to strategic waters off Iran’s coast to signal that a US or NATO war with Iran would not remain confined to the Middle East.

The exercise itself unfolded under the shadow of growing US and Israeli war threats against Iran, which have escalated since Washington unilaterally scrapped a six-party nuclear treaty with Iran last year and re-imposed devastating sanctions on Iran’s economy.

As Russian warships arrived in Iran on Wednesday, Israel’s Army Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi called for military action against Iran. “It would be better if we weren’t the only ones responding to them,” Kohavi said, in what the Times of Israel called a rebuke to Washington, the Saudi monarchy and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms for not attacking Iran earlier. Kohavi added that Israeli forces would operate openly as well as clandestinely across the area, “even at the risk of war.”

Iranian Deputy Army Commander for Coordination Affairs Habibollah Sayyari warned in turn that the ships involved in the exercise would fire on any vessel trying to spy on them. “Many countries are definitely seeking to know what the matter is. Spies have also taken action,” he said. “We will hit whatever spying craft are in the war game zone.”

Russian and Chinese officials guardedly expressed concern over possible war and their support for Iran. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said: “We are dealing with the issues of maintaining stability in the region, security and the fight against terrorism. This co-operation and interaction are built on both a bilateral and multilateral basis but exclusively on a legal basis.”

Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said, “The drill will deepen exchange and cooperation between the navies of the three countries.” Wu called the exercises “normal military-to-military co-operation,” adding that they were “not necessarily connected with the regional situation,” an apparent reference to the risk of a US war of aggression against Iran.

The identity of ships involved in the exercise belied official claims that it only aimed to practice antipiracy and rescue operations, however. Russia’s Baltic Fleet guard ship Yaroslav Mudry, the tanker Yelnya and the tug Viktor Konetsky, and the Chinese guided missile destroyer Xining are involved. The Xining is nicknamed the “carrier killer,” as it carries many anti-ship and land-attack cruise missiles designed to sink large hostile warships, like US aircraft carriers, in long-range strikes.

US State Department officials contacted by the Financial Times denounced the drill, warning Iran that it should “think twice” about joint military exercises. Referring to the fact that roughly a third of the world’s internationally traded oil passes through the Gulf of Oman, the US officials hypocritically added that these war games “should concern all nations with an interest in safeguarding freedom of navigation in the region.”

The main danger to the region, however, has been the wars launched by US imperialism and its European allies since the Stalinist regime dissolved the Soviet Union and restored capitalism in 1991. Decades of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria claimed millions of lives, forced tens of millions to flee their homes, and spawned bitter proxy conflicts across the region. Trump’s sanctions and war threats against Iran continue this policy of trying to forcibly dominate the region.

Iran, Russia and China moved to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the proxy war NATO launched in Syria in 2011, committing military or intelligence forces to support Assad even as NATO’s war claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Now, facing a NATO military build-up in Eastern Europe and the intensifying US “pivot to Asia” and trade war threats against China, Moscow and Beijing are signaling that they would offer similar support to Iran.

The threats of US military action against Iran and trade war tariffs have also intensified tensions between Washington and its ostensible allies in Asia and Europe, and an imperialist military escalation in the Persian Gulf is now underway. The same inter-imperialist rivalries over control of resources, markets and profits that twice exploded into world war in the 20th century again threaten to erupt into war in the 21st.

Amid growing tensions in the Persian Gulf after Washington scrapped the Iranian nuclear treaty, the Japanese oil tanker Kokuta Courageous was hit by a missile strike. Iranian officials strongly denied US accusations that they had launched the missile and, significantly, Japanese officials declined to endorse these US accusations. Last week, Tokyo announced that it would dispatch warships to the Persian Gulf to guard Japanese merchant shipping in the area.

On December 19, French military officials confirmed that the frigate Courbet would join Danish and Dutch vessels in a European force patrolling Persian Gulf oil waterways. Amid the Brexit crisis, Britain has not joined the European mission but has instead committed its ships to a US-led force in the region, together with Australia.

While Iran, Russia and China are targeted by imperialist aggression, this does not make the military maneuvers of Tehran or the post-Stalinist capitalist regimes in Russia or China progressive. Oscillating between attempts to cut deals with Washington and threatening to launch a catastrophic conflict that could escalate into all-out nuclear war, they neither can nor want to appeal to growing anti-war and anti-capitalist sentiment in the international working class. They are terrified of the growing threat they feel from below.

The year 2019 has seen a historic upsurge of strikes and mass social protests from US auto factories and mines, to the French “yellow vest” and public sector strikes, the national teachers strike in Poland, and mass protests from Algeria and Lebanon to Iraq and Hong Kong. Explosive anger against social inequality goes hand-in-hand with growing opposition to imperialist wars. Within these developing struggles, it is critical to build an international anti-war movement in the working class.

Harvard University Middle East Initiative (MEI) Research Fellowships 2020

Application Deadline: 15th January, 2020

To be taken at (country): USA

Field of Study: Priority will be given to applications pursuing one of these four primary areas of focus:

1. Democratizing Politics: Establishing durable, accountable democracies not only by focusing on political institutions, but also by empowering the region’s citizens.
2. Building Peace: Addressing the sources of domestic and interstate conflict and generating durable political settlements.
3. Revitalizing the State: Reforming the Middle East’s social service delivery systems with a special emphasis on health, education and social protection.
4. Democratizing Financial and Labor Markets: Working to ensure that the financial and labor markets in the Middle East benefit the entire population, not merely the elite.

About the Award: The Middle East Initiative (MEI) engages public policy issues in the Middle East by convening academic and policy experts, collaborating with regional partners, and developing the next generation of leaders.

Fellows are expected to be physically present at Harvard for the duration of the two-semester fellowship. Pre-doctoral research fellows are encouraged to work on, and ideally complete, their doctoral dissertations. Postdoctoral or faculty fellows may use this fellowship to complete a book or develop other works-in-progress.

Fellows are generally expected to:

• Complete a 25-30 page Working Paper to be published by the Middle East Initiative
• Present their research at seminars open to the public
• Attend seminars of other Middle East Initiative research fellows
• Participate in Middle East Initiative activities as appropriate

Type: Fellowship

Eligibility:  

• Eligible candidates include advanced doctoral candidates, recent recipients of a Ph.D. or equivalent degree, and untenured faculty members.
• Applicants for pre-doctoral fellowships must have passed general examinations and should be in or near the final year of their program.
• Applications are welcome from political scientists, historians, economists, sociologists, and other social scientists.
• Applications are also encourage applications from women, minorities, and citizens of all countries.

Value of Fellowship:

• The Middle East Initiative offers ten-month stipends of $40,000 to pre-doctoral fellows and $58,000 to postdoctoral fellows. Pre-doctoral fellows are not benefits eligible. Interested candidates are encouraged to apply for other sources of funding. All applicants should clearly indicate on their application form whether they are seeking full or partial funding, and indicate other potential funding sources. Non-stipendiary appointments are also offered, but the application process remains the same.
• Fellows who expect to complete their Ph.D. program prior to the fellowship can apply for a postdoctoral appointment. Confirmation of Ph.D. completion is required to receive the postdoctoral stipend rate and benefits. The fellow will be paid at the pre-doctoral rate and will not be benefits eligible until the Middle East Initiative receives confirmation of Ph.D. completion.

Duration of Fellowship: 10 months

How to Apply: 

• CV/Resume
• Unofficial transcript (pre-doctoral fellow applicants only)
• Research Proposal (3-5 double-spaced pages)
• Writing sample (less than 50 double-spaced pages)
• Contact information for three recommenders submitting letters on your behalf

To apply, please complete the online application form.

Visit Fellowship Webpage for details

Indian Government (ICCR) Scholarships 2020/2021 for Under/Postgraduate African Students

Application Deadline: 29th February 2020

Offered annually? Yes

About Scholarship: At the inaugural plenary of the India – Africa Forum Summit held in New Delhi in April 2008, the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India announced the Government of India’s initiative to enhance the academic opportunities for students of African countries in India by increasing the number of scholarships for them to pursue undergraduate, postgraduate and higher courses.
The ICCR – Indian Council for Cultural Relations – implements this scheme on behalf of the Ministry of External Affairs.

Type: undergraduate, post-graduate

Eligibility:

• Students applying for doctoral/ post doctoral courses should include a synopsis of the proposed area of research.
• Students wishing to study performing arts should, if possible, enclose video/ audio cassettes of their recorded performances.
• Candidates must have adequate knowledge of English.
• ICCR will not entertain applications which are sent to ICCR directly by the students or which are sent by local Embassies/High Commissions in New Delhi.
• Priority will be given to students who have never studied in India before.
• No application will be accepted for admission to courses in MBBS/MD or Dentistry/Nursing.
• Candidates may note that Indian universities/educational institution are autonomous and independent and hence have their own eligibility criteria which have to be fulfilled. Please also note that acceptance of application by the University is also not a guarantee of admission. A scholarship is awarded only when admission is confirmed by ICCR.
• Student must carry a proper visa. Students should ensure that they get the correct visa from the Indian Embassy/High Commission. Government of India guideline stipulate that if a scholar arrives without proper visa and his/her actual admission at the University/Institute does not materialize, he/she will be deported to his/her country.
• Before departing for India the scholars should seek a full briefing from the Indian Diplomatic Mission in their country about living conditions in India/the details of scholarship/the type and duration of the course to which he/she is admitted. Scholars should inform the Indian Embassy/High Commission of their travel schedule well in advance so that ICCR can make reception and other arrangements for them.
• Scholars are advised to bring some money with them to meet incidental expenditures on arrival in India.
• The scholars who are awarded scholarships should bring with them all documents relating to their qualification in original for verification by the respective college/university at the time of admission

Number of Scholarships: 900

Value of Scholarship: (figure is in Indian currency)

• Living allowance (Stipend) (Per Month)
• Undergraduate -5,500 , Postgraduate-6,000 M.Phil / Ph.D 7,000, Post-doctoral Fellow-7,500
• -House Rent Allowance (Per Month)
• In Grade 1 cities-5,000 and In other cities-4,500
• -Contingent Grant (per annum)
• Undergraduate-5,000, Postgraduate-7,000, M/Phil / Ph.D and M.Tech./ME-12,500, Postdoctoral studies-15,500, Tuition Fee/Other Compulsory Fee-As per actual (excluding refundable amount) –Thesis and dissertation Expenses (Once in entire duration of course)
• D Scholar-10,000 and for BBA/BCA/MBA/MCA/M.Tech and other course required submission of Project-7.000
• -Medical Benefits
• Under the scheme scholars are expected to seek treatment only at medical centre or dispensary attached to universities / Institutes where they enrolled or in the nearest Government hospital (Bill are settled as admissible according to AMA/CGHS norms)

Duration of Scholarship: For the period of study

Eligible Countries: Under this Scheme, the Council offers 900 scholarships to the following African countries:
Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Comoros, Congo (Republic of), Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea (concurrent from Nairobi), Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Kenya, Libya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan (Republic of), Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sao Tame & Principe, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

To be taken at (country): India

How to Apply

• Please read the instruction before filling out the application form.
• Please also read the financial terms and conditions.
• Detailed guidelines on the process of applying for ICCR Scholarships online on the A2A Portal and procedure and norms governing the same is given on the www.a2ascholarships.iccr.gov.in .
• Students must read instructions and apply through the same website and no hard copy of the application form is required at the Mission.

Visit Scholarship webpage for details

Australian mental health report highlights a systemic crisis

Margaret Rees

The Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health delivered a 680-page interim report last month, describing the state’s system as one of acute crisis but offering nothing immediate to address the catastrophe.

“Consumers, carers and those working in the mental health system, including psychiatrists, are being traumatised by an under-resourced system,” the report stated. It criticised patchworked and fragmented services. “There are service gaps, insufficient services to meet demand and inequities in who can access services.”

While an estimated 3.1 percent of the Australian population lives with severe mental illness, Victoria only offers enough public specialist mental health services for about half that number—an estimated 1.16 percent of the state’s people. The national average is 1.8 percent, which is shameful in itself, but Victoria remains the lowest.

On these figures, the state should be providing specialist clinical services for an additional 105,000 people. To do so, the state Labor government’s mental health expenditure would need to be 107 percent higher.

This situation is the product of deliberate government policy, by successive governments, both Labor and Liberal, including that of Premier Daniel Andrews, who has been in office since December 2014.

If Victoria’s funding had even reached the national average, it would have meant an additional $1.44 billion in 2016–17. The report estimates this would have provided an additional 1,500 medical officers (including psychiatrists), 8,000 more mental health nurses, 2,700 additional diagnostic and allied health professionals and 70 more consumer or family care workers.

The report notes that one expression of the crisis has been a marked shift away from mobile crisis assessment and outreach services toward community-based clinics and hospital emergency departments.

There was an 82 percent increase in mental health-related presentations to emergency departments between 2008–09 and 2017–18, while non-mental health-related presentations increased by only 27 percent. This places an enormous strain on resources and staff in emergency departments.

In contrast to the glaring social need outlined in the report, its recommendations are marginal. They include just 170 additional youth and adult acute inpatient mental health beds by 2021–22; 60 new graduate placements for allied health and other professionals; and 120 additional graduate placements for nurses.

These measures are totally inadequate. The Victorian government’s own “Inspire” report of June 2018 found that 20,000 Victorians attempt suicide every year. A Department of Health and Human survey last year found there were about 460 vacancies in the mental health nursing workforce, with some services reporting a more than 20 percent vacancy rate.

In 2018, there were approximately 4,215 full-time equivalent (FTE) nurses working in the Victorian public mental health system. This represented an increase of 31 percent since June 2003, but Victoria’s population expanded by 34 percent during the same period.

Australasian College for Emergency Medicine President Dr John Bonning said his members remained “concerned about the lack of immediate relief for people presenting in acute need to emergency departments [EDs], as well as the welfare of the health professionals in EDs who are trying to advocate for access to safe and effective care.”

Bonning said previous studies had shown that “across Australia and New Zealand, system-wide failures have resulted in an overdependence on EDs to provide mental health care and services. This is despite EDs not being recognised as integral parts of the mental health service system.”

For almost two decades, Labor and Liberal governments—both federal and state—have been warned about the systemic risks facing the mental health system due to workforce shortages. In December 2003, for example, a report prepared for the National Mental Health Working Group and the Australian Health Workforce Officials Committee stated: “The mental health nursing workforce is experiencing a shortage of adequately qualified employees and the situation is becoming increasingly acute.”

In 2014, Health Workforce Australia predicted that by 2030, across Australia, there would be a shortfall of 11,500 mental health nurses, representing a 61 percent gap of workforce supply. It is no wonder the workforce feels overstretched and unable to cope.

However, this disastrous gap does not affect many wealthier households that can afford private insurance. They can access an array of inpatient and outpatient services that far exceed those in the public system, including lengthier stays as inpatients.

To fund its proposals, the royal commission report proposes that the Victorian government institute a levy or tax. It cites the examples of the Transport Accident Commission, which is funded by a levy on Victorian motorists when they register their vehicles each year, and the Fire Services Levy imposed on ratepayers after the catastrophic bushfires of 2009.

Ominously, it also refers to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which is partly funded by increased Medicare levies on taxpayers. Introduced by the last federal Labor government in 2013, the NDIS has been a vehicle for privatising services, denying decent care to thousands of disabled people.

Such a levy would set another precedent for imposing an inequitable burden on working class households to pay for an essential service. Meanwhile, state Labor government spending is expanding on the police and prisons. The interim report indicates that the average annual growth in expenditure on mental health from 2007–08 to 2016–17 was 3.0 percent, while for corrections services it was 8.9 percent.

The report also ignored obvious underlying issues. Launch Housing chief executive Bevan Warner commented: “It is disappointing to see no mention of housing or homelessness in the interim report’s recommendations. Evidence has shown time and again that unless a person has secure housing, mental health programs will be largely ineffective. People need a stable place to recover.”

The interim report has brought a worsening crisis into plain view, but provided no resolution. To address the disaster would mean impinging on the corporate profit system, which demands ever-lower social spending from the governments, Labor and Liberal, that serve its interests.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accepts Nobel Peace Prize

Joe Williams

Given that the Nobel Peace Prize was founded by an individual who postured as an anti-war activist at the same time he became obscenely wealthy by developing the most destructive mass-casualty weapons that existed at the time, it is fitting that the award has traditionally been used by the European powers to advance their imperialist interests and accumulate wealth under the guise of promoting peace and human rights.

This tradition continued on December 10, 2019, when Ethiopia prime minister and former military intelligence officer Abiy Ahmed became the latest to accept the award. He now joins a rogues’ gallery of imperialists, militarists, petty bourgeois nationalists, ethnic cleansers, and war criminals that include Barack Obama, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Kissinger, and F.W. de Klerk. It also includes Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the prize in 1991, but has recently returned to the headlines by defending the Burmese military’s mass murder of Rohingya Muslims.

In a statement that thoroughly falsified Ahmed’s brief tenure in power, the Nobel Committee claimed it was rewarding him because “he spent his first 100 days as Prime Minister lifting the country’s state of emergency, granting amnesty to thousands of political prisoners, discontinuing media censorship, legalising outlawed opposition groups, dismissing military and civilian leaders who were suspected of corruption, and significantly increasing the influence of women in Ethiopian political and community life. He has also pledged to strengthen democracy by holding free and fair elections.”

In reality, Ahmed has already begun to re-impose the state of emergency, beginning with the resumption of internet blackouts. He also criminalized new political groups to replace the ones he legalized, mostly affiliated with the Tigray ethnic group, and purged them from the government. Significantly, the Prize Committee endorsed this racist and anti-democratic crackdown, hailing the mass arrests and dismissals that have taken place without any due process as a war against “military and civilian leaders who were suspected of corruption.”

The emptiness of Ahmed’s supposed achievements was reflected in his acceptance speech. Unlike Martin Luther King, Jr., who saw the award for what it is and used his acceptance speech to deliver an impassioned speech calling attention to the suffering of American blacks, Ahmed’s speech completely ignored the immense suffering of the people of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Instead, he treated the audience to a 20-minute string of empty, simplistic platitudes, such as “Peace is a labor of love,” “It takes only a few to make war, but a village and a nation to build peace,” “nurturing peace is like planting and growing trees,” “when our love for humanity outgrows our love for human vanity, then we will know peace,” and on it went.

Unlike previous winners, Ahmed has declined to give press conferences or take questions from reporters about the award. This caused the ten days of festivities that normally precede the award ceremony to be severely truncated, with most events being cancelled, and others forced to go on with an empty seat instead of the guest of honor. Ahmed shocked even some of his own supporters by refusing to participate in an event sponsored by the Norwegian chapter of Save the Children, in which traditionally school children are invited to ask the winner questions, while the royal family looks on.

After initially defending Abiy’s reclusiveness, the Nobel Committee was eventually pressured by the media into releasing a statement of disapproval. “The Nobel Institute and the Nobel Committee wishes Abiy Ahmed had said ‘yes’ to meeting Norwegian and international press. We have been very clear about this and have clarified that there are several reasons we find this highly problematic,” the statement said.

A review of Abiy’s political history makes it clear why he sees such a need to carefully vet media coverage of his award. Having come to power in April 2018 promising to end the despotism that has historically characterized Ethiopia’s military-backed governments, Ahmed’s tenure as prime minister has been dominated by tension between his government and the military.

Among Ahmed’s promised reforms were expanded freedom of speech and expression, opening up the internet and limiting the military’s role in the government. As a gesture of goodwill upon taking office, he released tens of thousands of political prisoners, ended the internet blackout imposed by the previous government of Hailemariam Desalegn and sacked over 100 generals and other high officers, mostly from the Tigray ethnic group that had dominated the previous regime.

However, this provoked a new round of unrest, both from officers who resent the military’s loss of political power, and from those who see the sackings as a racist attack on the Tigray people. The Tigray are often seen to be collectively responsible for the crimes of the previous regime, and hundreds of thousands of Tigray have been driven from their homes due to racist violence since Ahmed’s rise to power. Nearly 1 million ethnic Gedeos have also been forced to flee their homes in West Guji under Ahmed’s rule. In both cases, the attackers belong to the Oromo ethnic group, of which Ahmed is a member.

Moreover, Ahmed has done nothing to stop the government’s policy of privatizing state assets, and seizing land, usually from ethnic minority groups, and selling it to investors in China and the Arabian Peninsula, who use it for crash crops instead of food. These policies are deeply hated by the Ethiopian people, so Ahmed has been forced to re-impose the internet blackout instituted by his predecessor.

The Nobel Peace Prize is, and always has been, a political award given with the aim of promoting definite policies. The selection was made by a committee composed of five members of the Norwegian Parliament, and its decisions reflect positions prevailing within the European ruling elite as a whole. As the World Socialist Web Site has noted in previous years, it is used by the European powers to influence American internal politics, promote preferred leaders of developing countries, and to pressure rival powers like China, as it did with awards to Liu Xiaobo and the Dalai Lama in years past. Therefore, the fact that Ahmed’s reforms are superficial and are already beginning to erode will have no impact on the European bourgeoisie’s efforts elevate him to the status of a Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi.

From their perspective, Abiy Ahmed deserves to be glorified as a Christ-like peacemaker because he has the potential to stabilize the Horn of Africa, a critical nexus of regional trade and political conflict. Like the previous government, Ahmed’s administration has provided basing for US drone operations and, along with Kenya, is propping up the US-backed regime in Somalia. He has been given credit for completing peace talks with Eritrea that were initiated by his predecessor and has intervened in Sudan to broker an agreement between warring factions. These actions have been invaluable to American and European conglomerates seeking to exploit the oil and mineral resources of the war torn and under-developed region.

At the same time, Ahmed has been wooed aggressively by China, which sees Ethiopia as a critical component of its “One Belt, One Road” initiative, which seeks to build a transportation and trade network that would fully interconnect China and Africa. The European powers likely intend for the Peace Prize to help deter Ahmed from embracing Beijing’s advances.

In a 2012 comment referring to the 2009 decision to award the Prize to Barack Obama, the World Socialist Web Site stated that:

The awarding of the prize to Obama three years ago was particularly bizarre. He had been in office for just nine months and had seamlessly continued the war-mongering policies of his predecessor. Comments at the time described the prize as a “symbolic boost” and “encouragement” for Obama to depart from the course of George W. Bush. In reality, the committee presented Obama with a carte blanche. It signaled that the commander in chief of the most powerful military machine in the world had the support of liberal European public opinion to do what he liked.

This has since been confirmed. Obama has continued the policies of his predecessor. Guantanamo remains open. The president uses drones to assassinate opponents of US imperialism. He has intensified the war in Afghanistan, authored a new war against Libya, and is preparing military intervention in Syria and war against Iran—with the support of virtually all of those who criticised the war policies of the Bush administration.

The gist of this statement could apply equally to Aung San Suu Kyi, who now openly defends mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Burma, a country with a history of ethnic violence and military repression similar to that of Ethiopia, or Ahmed himself. Given Ethiopia’s history of brutal monarchies, dictatorships, war and civil unrest, it is no surprise that many Ethiopians have reacted positively to the chance to reunite with family in Eritrea and other limited reforms. However, Ahmed’s image as a reformer is belied by his antidemocratic purge of the government, gradual re-imposition of internet blackouts and stoking of ethnic tensions, especially against Tigrays. Ethiopian workers must understand the decision to award him the Nobel Peace Prize as the grave warning that it is.

Croatia: Right-wing Social Democrat wins first round of presidential elections

Markus Salzmann

The first round of the presidential election in the newest EU member state Croatia was won by the Zoran Milanović, the Social Democratic candidate (SDP). There will now be a run-off vote on January 5, in which Milanović will compete against the right-wing incumbent Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović from the governing party HDZ.

Milanović received about 30 percent of the votes, while Grabar-Kitarović received about 27 percent. The non-party right-wing extremist Miroslav Škoro won 24 percent of the vote and was supported by various nationalist and openly fascist parties. All other candidates, who mostly represented regional or other small parties, lay far behind and played no role.

Although the president’s duties are essentially ceremonial, a defeat for the HDZ would weaken it considerably in the run up to the parliamentary elections next year. Moreover, Croatia will take over the presidency of the European Union from January 1, 2020 and also aims to join the eurozone.

All candidates are deeply hated and discredited among broad sections of the population. Accordingly, turnout in the elections was barely 39 percent.

Grabar-Kitarović’s HDZ forms the government in Zagreb, which under Prime Minister Andrej Plenković stands for a ruthless right-wing course. Brutal “push-backs,” i.e., illegal deportations, across the border to Bosnia-Herzegovina, are unofficially ordered by the government. At home, the government is constantly harassing refugees and foreigners. In recent months, tensions with Serbia have again increased.

In order to meet the demands of the EU and IMF, the HDZ is implementing anti-social reforms. This year, a pension “reform” was passed, labour laws tightened, and further social cuts implemented. At the same time, the government is massively increasing military spending. Currently, 6.7 billion kuna (€900 million) are being spent on the military; the budget is to be increased by 40 percent by 2024. Other NATO demands include the modernisation of equipment.

Most recently, the government, in cooperation with the courts, attacked workers’ basic democratic rights. For example, a strike by road workers was banned. Last year, a strike at Croatia Airlines was banned on the grounds that it would damage the company.

Grabar-Kitarović is now vying for the votes of Škoro and the extreme right in the run-off vote. The folk musician and businessman Škoro was himself a member of parliament for the HDZ for a long time. Like other former HDZ politicians, he came into conflict with the party leadership over the move to join the EU. Meanwhile, he is active in fascist circles that supported his candidacy. Among other things, Škoro has called for soldiers to be stationed at the border to keep immigrants out and to further intensify the already inhumane border policy. He also spoke out in favour of pardoning convicted war criminals.

The acting president deliberately held her final rally in the city of Vukovar, in the east of the country. She is being glorified by Croatian nationalists as a symbol of Serbian atrocities for the siege by Serbian soldiers during fighting in the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. This alone was a clear signal to the extreme right around Škoro.

The HDZ itself is the product of aggressive Croatian nationalism. The party was founded in 1989 under Franjo Tudjmann, who only a few years later took the country into a bloody civil war and, as president and army supreme commander, was personally responsible for the expulsion of 400,000 Serbs from Croatia. Although the HDZ adopted an EU-friendly course, to serve the interests of the narrow upper class, the nationalist forces always set the tone.

The fact that Milanović received the most votes has nothing to do with broad popular support. From 2011 to 2016, the former diplomat headed a social democratic government, which took the country into the EU in 2013. Before that, the social democrats and HDZ had pushed through brutal cuts and privatisation measures fuelling unemployment and social misery.

During this period, the government undertook harsh actions against refugees on the Balkan route. Milanović had the border sealed off and deported refugees to Hungary, knowing full well that the right-wing Orban government had set up concentration camps in the border area. After the election defeat in 2016, Milanović campaigned for the nationalist Kosovar president Edi Rama, among others.

During the election campaign, Milanović promised “normality,” trying to present himself as a moderate candidate who stood against nationalism. Croatia must finally put behind it the war against Serbia, which brought death and devastation to the country from 1991 to 1995, but also independence, he said.

In fact, Milanović stands for the same reactionary nationalist politics as the HDZ. In 2015, he described Serbs as “barbarians” and declared Croatia was “older and wiser.” Before the last parliamentary elections, he held a big military parade in Zagreb to mark the anniversary of the reconquest of Serbian Krajina.

No matter which candidate wins the run-off election in early January, they will speak for the reactionary social and political interests of a ruling elite which, as in other countries, is reacting to the growth of class struggle with a sharp turn to the right.

For a long time, the population has expressed growing rejection of all the establishment parties responsible for the social and political catastrophe. Up to the beginning of December, teachers had been on strike for 36 days and 20,000 people demonstrated in Zagreb. Almost all schools remained closed, and many students joined the protests. It was the biggest strike since the country’s independence almost 30 years ago. Teachers used it to protest against low wages and unsustainable working conditions.

Only after extensive government efforts, with the help of the trade unions, could the strike be stifled. The agreement reached provides for a wage increase of about 6 percent over two years. This will only further consolidate low wages and will not change the bad working conditions and abysmal provision of equipment in schools.

The trade unions, working closely with various party cliques, presented this betrayal as a victory. “We have made a good compromise, which enabled us to achieve what we wanted from the beginning,” said Branimir Mihalinec, head of the teachers’ union NSZSSH.

Premier Plenković was also satisfied with the result. Under no circumstances should the strike continue or be extended, he said, as protests and work stoppages are becoming increasingly frequent in other companies and sectors. Since October, for example, there have also been strikes at the industrial company Djuro Djakovic. The manufacturer of locomotives, freight cars, tanks and other military and construction vehicles has been in financial difficulties for some time.

UK Johnson government launches anti-Gypsy/Traveller/Roma measures

Paul Bond

Among the repressive legislation in the Queen’s Speech of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government are racist measures targeting Gypsy, Roma and Traveler (GRT) communities.

The proposals for the Police Powers and Protections Bill include: “Potential measures to criminalise the act of trespassing when setting up an unauthorised encampment in England and Wales, and the introduction of new police powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of trespassers who set up unauthorised encampments.”

At present unauthorised encampments are a matter of civil rather than criminal law. The change is aimed at faster dispersal. The pro-Tory Daily Mail enthused that it “could give police more power to break [encampments] up instead of local residents having to wait for councils to take action.”

Justifying the proposals, Johnson’s office noted that there were 1,098 caravans on unauthorised camps in England and Wales in July 2019, 728 of them “on land without the permission of the landowner.”

This only points to a lack of social provision of adequate transit sites and stopping places—a critical problem for the recognised ethnic GRT groups in Britain. The Criminal Justice Act 1994, introduced by John Major’s Conservative government, repealed the duty of local authorities to provide official sites.

Unlike most European populations of Roma and Sinti, many of Britain’s 63,000 Gypsies, Roma and Travelers still pursue some itinerant life. The proposals would enforce a solution to this question by criminalisation and police repression.

Without enough authorised encampments, the proposal to allow police to seize Travelers’ caravans—their homes—and destroy their property would effectively criminalise the existence of GRT communities. One Gypsy woman, who was too afraid to give her name, told Foreign Policy magazine, “Every single thing of value, financial or emotional,” is in her caravan. Another called it “a legal pogrom.”

Speaking ahead of the election, a member of the GRT community told the Canary, “The violence of me and my family being forcibly destroyed should scare all reasonable people. It’s ethnic cleansing.”

Anti-Gypsy discrimination has long been a component of right-wing populism. The current proposals were contained in the Tory election manifesto, which made the typical fascistic appeal for the legislation “to protect our communities.”

Alongside making “intentional trespass a criminal offence,” the manifesto also pledged to give councils “greater powers within the planning system” aimed at removing groups from the area altogether.

The Welsh Conservative Manifesto went further, promising not just to “tackle unauthorised camps,” but that police would have “more power to break up travelers’ camps” generally.

Michael Gove’s campaign material referred to “illegal traveler incursions.”

The proposal to criminalise trespass and give the police greater powers to seize property and possessions was first floated by Home Secretary Priti Patel early in November. Her consultation outlined the proposals on criminalising trespass and making it illegal to stop alongside or on a road. It also outlined proposals that the police could force Travelers to move to a transit site in a different county, rather than locally, as now. It also proposed banning Travelers from the local authority area for one year rather than the current three months, which would serve to cut off access to homelessness support.

Patel resorted to familiar racist tropes, referring to “reports of damage to property, noise, abuse and littering.” The charity Friends, Families and Travelers (FFT) noted that this focused on “the behavior of a minority, yet tar[s] all Gypsies and Travelers with the same brush.” If this were truly Patel’s concern, FFT pointed out, there is already ample legislation to tackle it. Two-thirds of police forces contacted by FFT said that lack of adequate site provision was the real issue.

Patel’s proposal to make it a criminal offence for Travelers to stop anywhere without prior permission clearly criminalises a whole ethnic group. She sought to give police power to seize the vehicle of “anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it.” She said she wanted to “test the appetite to go further” than her predecessor Sajid Javid’s proposal to “lower the criteria… for the police to be able to direct people away from unauthorised sites.” The police would be authorised to intervene in the presence of two vehicles rather than six, as now.

In 2011, Patel herself acknowledged, “There are not enough authorised sites. If travelers had authorised sites they wouldn’t need illegal sites.”

FFT, commenting on Patel’s consultation, explained, “Criminalisation of trespass would not make unauthorised encampments and nomadic Gypsies and Travelers disappear; it will however compound the stark inequalities experienced by Gypsies and Travelers and raise serious questions about compatibility with human rights protections.”

A recent spate of council injunctions have aimed at preventing Travelers from stopping on public land. Travelers have still been able to challenge this successfully in the courts, although that would change under these proposals.

In May, Bromley council in south London was refused a borough-wide injunction against encampment on 171 tracts of land. Marc Willers QC, who successfully contested the injunction on behalf of the charity London Gypsies and Travelers, said seeking an injunction against “persons unknown” rather than specific individuals was discriminatory and unfairly demonised all Gypsies and Travelers. He reiterated that “the way to reduce the number of unauthorised encampments is to make adequate site provision for Gypsies and Travelers rather than subject them to a continual cycle of forcible evictions which consigns them and their children to a life of misery and deprivation.”

According to the government, money is available to councils to develop authorised sites, from the £9 billion Affordable Homes Programme. No councils have done so since that programme began in 2016. The government has also made £2 million specifically available to help councils “crack down” on unauthorised encampments, indicating where their true priorities lie.

Demonisation of Travelers and Gypsies has resulted in a spate of racist violence and attacks. Caravans were set alight on Traveler sites in Leicestershire and Somerset this year. Recent council discussions in Lincolnshire have been accompanied by threats to firebomb any new site.

Anti-Gypsy racism is endemic within the Tory party. Last year, one council chief in the West Midlands, Mike Bird, called Travelers “parasites” who cause “misery and mayhem.” In 2014, Berkshire Councillor Alan Mellins was suspended after saying that Travelers refusing eviction should be “executed.”

Three years ago, Tory MP Gary Streeter called for Travelers not to be classed as a vulnerable ethnic minority. The press have often evaded accusations of racism by not capitalising Gypsy or Traveler, claiming they are not racial terms. Streeter called Travelers “intruders,” likening them to Genghis Khan.

This year, Sir Paul Beresford MP called Travelers coming into his constituency “a disease.” During the election campaign, the successful Crewe and Nantwich candidate Keiran Mullan led campaigns against Gypsies stopping in a park in Nantwich.

Last year Andrew Selous MP called for caravan sites to be converted to “settled accommodation.” Traveler groups described his bill as an attempt at “forced assimilation.”

Anti-Gypsy racism and legislation must be opposed. They are the thin end of a wedge of more general repressive measures confronting every layer of the working class.

This is underscored by the overlap with the anti-Semitism witch-hunt launched against Labour under Jeremy Corbyn seeking to defame and criminalise anti-Zionist opponents of Israel’s repression of the Palestinians.

In 2007, Blairite Labour MP John—made Baron Mann of Holbeck Moor and the government’s “anti-Semitism Tsar” for services rendered—produced an “anti-social behaviour handbook” for his constituency. This featured a section on Travelers with the bold red headline, “The Police have powers to remove any gypsies or travelers.”

A legal expert on Traveler law and trespass told Travelers’ Times that the legal advice in the booklet was wrong. A Gypsy constituent referred the publication to police, who investigated it as a potential “hate incident.” Mann told police it was no longer in print—around 20,000 were distributed—and police advised him against singling out any community in the event of future reprints.

Mann’s response was to write to his constituent, accusing him of “defamatory comments.”

In 2016, Mann was chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Anti-Semitism, which had been invited to a seminar to discuss racism against Gypsies and Travelers. When other organising groups learned of Mann’s booklet they raised questions about it. The APPG pulled out of the seminar without further explanation.

More than half a million Gypsies were murdered during the Holocaust.

Eric Pickles, similarly, was appointed UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues by then Tory prime minister, David Cameron in 2015. That year the High Court found he had discriminated against Gypsies and Travelers in the planning process while Secretary of State for Local Government.

Billionaires’ wealth surged in 2019

Barry Grey

As the second decade of the 21st century comes to a close, its most salient feature—the plundering of humanity by a global financial oligarchy—continues unabated.

Amidst trade war and the growth of militarism and authoritarianism on the one side, and an eruption of international strikes and protests by the working class against social inequality on the other, the stock market is hitting record highs and the fortunes of the world’s billionaires are continuing to surge.

New apartment buildings are under construction overlooking Central Park, Tuesday, April 17, 2018, in New York. (AP Photo - Mark Lennihan)

On Friday, one day after all three major US stock indexes set new records, Bloomberg issued its end-of-year survey of the world’s 500 richest people. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index reported that the oligarchs’ fortunes increased by a combined total of $1.2 trillion, a 25 percent rise over 2018. Their collective net worth now comes to $5.9 trillion.

To place this figure in some perspective, these 500 individuals control more wealth than the gross domestic product of the United States at the end of the third quarter of 2019, which was $5.4 trillion.

The year’s biggest gains went to France’s Bernard Arnault, who added $36.5 billion to his fortune, bringing it above the rarified $100 billion level to $105 billion. He knocked speculator Warren Buffett, at $89.3 billion, down to fourth place. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos lost nearly $9 billion due to a divorce settlement, but maintained the top position, with a net worth of $116 billion. Microsoft founder Bill Gates gained $22.7 billion for the year and held on to second place at $113 billion.

The 172 American billionaires on the Bloomberg list added $500 billion, with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg recording the year’s biggest US gain at $27.3 billion, placing him in fifth place worldwide with a net worth of $79.3 billion.

It is difficult to comprehend the true significance of such stratospheric sums. In his 2016 book Global Inequality, economist Branko Milanovic wrote:

A billion dollars is so far outside the usual experience of practically everyone on earth that the very quantity it implies is not easily understood… Suppose now that you inherited either $1 million or $1 billion, and that you spent $1,000 every day. It would take you less than three years to run through your inheritance in the first case, and more than 2,700 years (that is, the time that separates us from Homer’s Iliad) to blow your inheritance in the second case.

The vast redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top of society is the outcome of a decades-long process, which was accelerated following the 2008 Wall Street crash. It is not the result of impersonal and simply self-activating processes. Rather, the policies of capitalist governments and parties around the world, nominally “left” as well as right, have been dedicated to the ever greater impoverishment of the working class and enrichment of the ruling elite.

In the US, the top one percent has captured all of the increase in national income over the past two decades, and all of the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.

The main mechanism for this transfer of wealth has been the stock market, and the policies of the US Federal Reserve and central banks internationally have been geared to providing cheap money to drive up stock prices. The cost of this massive subsidy to the financial markets and the oligarchs has been paid by the working class, in the form of social cuts, mass layoffs, the destruction of pensions and health benefits, and the replacement of relatively secure and decent-paying jobs with part-time, temporary and contingent “gig” positions.

Since Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017, pledging to slash corporate taxes, lift regulations on big business and dramatically increase the military budget, the Dow has surged by nearly 19,000 points. This year, Trump and the financial markets applied massive pressure on the Fed to reverse its efforts to “normalize” interest rates. The Fed complied. It carried out three rate cuts and repeatedly assured the markets it had no plans to raise rates in 2020.

This windfall for the banks and hedge funds was supported by the Democrats no less than the Republicans. In fact, Trump’s economic policy has been given de facto support by the Democratic Party all down the line—from his tax cuts for corporations and the rich to his attack on virtually all regulations on business. Even in the midst of impeachment—carried out entirely on the grounds of “national security” and Trump’s supposed “softness” toward Russia—the Democrats have voted by wide margins for Trump’s budget, his anti-Chinese US-Mexico-Canada trade pact and his record $738 billion Pentagon war budget.

This has included giving Trump all the money he wants to build his border wall and carry out the mass incarceration and persecution of immigrants.

Trump’s pro-corporate policies are an extension and expansion of those pursued by the Obama administration. It allocated trillions in tax-payer money to bail out the banks and flooded the financial markets with cheap credit, driving up stock prices, while imposing a 50 percent across-the-board cut in pay for newly hired autoworkers in its bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. Obama oversaw the closure of thousands of schools and the layoff of hundreds of thousands of teachers, and enacted austerity budgets that slashed social programs.

Two of those running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination are billionaires—Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg. The latter, with a net worth of $56 billion, is the ninth richest person in the US. He entered the race as the spokesman for oligarchs outraged over talk from Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren of token tax increases on the super-rich.

The oligarchs are not frightened by Sanders and Warren—two longstanding defenders of the American ruling class, who seek to mask their subservience to capital with talk of making the oligarchs pay “their fair share”—a euphemism for defending their right to pillage the population. They are frightened by the growth of mass opposition to capitalism that finds a distorted expression in support for the phony “progressives” in the Democratic fold.

Between them, Bloomberg and Steyer have already spent $200 million of their own money in an effort to buy the election outright.

The impact of the policy of social plunder is seen in the deepening of a malignant social crisis in country after country. In the US, society is marching backwards, as the crying need for schools, hospitals, affordable housing, pensions, the rebuilding of decrepit roads, bridges, transportation, flood control, water and sewage, fire control and electricity grids is met with the official response: “There is no money.”

The result? Three straight years of declining life expectancy, record addiction and suicide rates, devastating wild fires and floods, electricity cut-offs by profiteering utility companies. And a climate crisis that cannot be addressed within the framework of a system dominated by a money-mad plutocracy.

Not a single serious social problem can be addressed under conditions where the ruling elite—through its bribed parties and politicians, aided by its pro-capitalist trade unions and backed up by its courts, police and troops—diverts resources from society to the accumulation of ever more luxurious yachts, mansions, private islands and personal jets.

Where social reform is impossible, social revolution is inevitable. The solution to the impasse is to be found in the growth of the class struggle. The movement of workers and youth all over the world—from mass strikes in France to strikes by autoworkers and teachers in the US, protests in Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil, strikes and mass demonstrations in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and India—reveals the social force that can and will put an end to capitalism.

The watchword must be—in opposition to the Corbyns, the Sanders, the Tsiprases and their pseudo-left promoters—“Expropriate the super-rich!” This is the starting point for the replacement of capitalist private ownership of production with social ownership and international planning—that is, world socialist revolution.