The Nordic Countries Aren’t Socialist

Matthew Funke

If the Nordic countries represent the horizon of possibility for world unfettered by capitalist exploitation, please end me now. Those who claim that Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland, have a socialist economy, also have a misunderstanding of socialism. This misconception must be dispelled, in order to better comprehend our present international political climate and specifically the world we must strive to achieve. The Nordic countries don’t represent the better world that is possible, because they aren’t socialist.

A common misconception is that adequate social welfare programs is the equivalent of socialism. Though these are very good things that would exist under socialism, (and have existed under socialism, as shown in Chapter 7 of the 1936 USSR Constitution) a society can still have these things and be capitalist. Canada, Hong Kong, Chile, Australia, and many other countries, have universal or free healthcare. Germany, Fiji, Egypt, and Turkey all offer free education, along with some others, though sometimes conditional in relation to academic achievement or lack thereof. If those countries were socialist or aiming for socialism, like Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia, then the US would be bullying them right now, as the US harasses Nicaragua and slams sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Socialism is not our present organization of life, with the same unequal power structures, but with a “big government.” Socialism is not social democracy, in which somehow we will establish socialism through reform and displace the bourgeoisie through institutional means in a bourgeois state. No matter how much corporate power is limited, as long as corporate powers still exist and still exploit the majority and still have the upper hand in society, it is not socialism. To put it simply, socialism is an economic system in which private property is abolished and the means of production (tools, technology, machinery, raw materials) are not privately owned but are owned by all the workers. Private property is inherently violent, as the capitalist class withholds the money you need to sustain yourself and buy commodities necessary for the maintenance of your life, and only give it to you on an hourly basis if you use your labor-power to produce commodities for them on their private property. They then extract the money they garnered from the sale of the commodity you made, which they sold at a higher cost than what it cost to produce, then put a large portion of it into their pocket, spend a bit on capital, and give even less to their workers. In a socialist society, workers would receive the full value of their labor, rather than bosses and investors taking the surplus value from the worker’s labor.

In the Nords, society isn’t organized to abolish wage-slavery or overcome proletarian alienation, but is fundamentally organized in the same way as the rest of the capitalist world. This capitalist organization is an inherently flawed and exploitive system that is devouring itself alive, as the clash of its internal contradictions will bring it to its knees, and raise the fists of the working class. The nordic states are infested with these contradictions.

Nightmares in the Nordic Countries

If we examine the nordic countries present life and history more closely, the fact that they are poisoned with capitalist hegemony becomes quite apparent.

Imperialism and monopolization is an inevitable conclusion of capitalism, as it ensures accumulation of more profit. For starters, four of the seven Nordic countries are a member of NATO, the union formed to fight against the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact. With the help of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, NATO destroyed semi-socialist Yugoslavia and sent Libya into a slave trade. Other unions that some Nordic countries are a part of include the European Free Trade Association, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the European Union. Because socialist countries love unquestionable economic co-operation with capitalist states and free trade, apparently.

Colonialism is also a product of capitalism, and the Nords aren’t free from these human rights abuses either. Norway colonized the indigenous Sámi people, and has been further plundering against their humanity for centuries. The country has been greatly criticised by the international community for their politics of Norwegianization of and discrimination against the indigenous population of the country. Finland treats them similarly, as they deny funding daycare and Sámi language instruction for Sámi children, yet provide these rights to Finnish children. Finland denies many land rights and aboriginal rights to the Sámi, and Sweden isn’t innocent of this either. Had the Sámi not been colonized and their lives not been trampled, the Nordic model wouldn’t be thriving as it is today, at the expense of the Sámi homeland.

Malcolm X was right when he said, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”, though liberalism masquerades behind “colorblindedness” and truisms like “all men are created equal.” Racism (not xenophobia or ethnocentrism) truly emerged from the birth of capitalism and the Atlantic Slave trade to justify the European colonialists horrendous atrocities committed abroad to secure immense profits. It has evolved today to provide a rationale for the horrible oppression of people of color throughout the entire world, justifying the horrible inequalities that non-white people face, while justifying the decadence that the rich enjoy. Sweden is no different: the country has consistently had race attacks, according to a United Nations report that shows an epidemic of racist violence, amidst a country that perceives itself as progressive and tolerant. Asylum centers are burned, Mosques are vandalized, and these crimes occur more often than usual during election seasons, especially by Nazi parties. Tobias Hübinette, associate professor in intercultural studies at Karlstad University, says: “The welfare state takes care of you if you are inside the system, but access to the system is largely through work and partly through the residential market, which are highly segregated.” Institutional racism is so deeply tangled within capitalist society, that the only solution is an entirely new system, because it can’t function without it.

Denmark is even designating “ghettos”, urban neighborhoods where immigrants (mostly from countries the West is bombing) typically live, which are plagued by gang violence and unemployment. The Danish government, even the “pro-immigrant” Social Democrat party, are all supportive of these measures. Measures include pretty much forcing children from the “ghettos” at the age of 1 to enroll in daycare that teaches “danish values”, Christianity, and the Danish language; though parents aren’t obligated to do so, if they don’t, the municipalities would end their child benefit payments. These immigration laws even include gentrification, demolition of ghetto neighborhoods, and deliberate lowering of social welfare benefits for those that live in the ghettos. Punishments for crimes are doubled if they are committed within the ghettos, crimes that normally result in fines would inevitably result in imprisonment for the suspect, and the deployment of police is increased in these neighborhoods.

Along with racism, xenophobia, colonialism, and imperialism, another huge issue in the Nords is violent misogyny. The Nordic countries, despite their gender equality, have the highest rate of domestic violence against women in the EU, with nearly 40% of women murdered were killed by their male partner. Online violence against women, including gendered hate speech, leaks of nude images of the victim, coercion of sexual communication, and threats of sexual assault, are all increasingly prevalent in Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. Doctors forcing teenage girls to take “virginity tests” against their will, often damaging the patients ovaries, is an all too common crime in Sweden. Perhaps this is all a product of the commodification of the traditionally female body as a sex object to be used, perhaps this is a product of a neglected hyper-masculine culture, perhaps this a product of a history of the “traditional family”, division of labor, and further gendered segregation. Misogyny, even if combatted institutionally, will always be an issue under capitalism, that leads to the destruction and loss of women’s lives.

Conclusion

Sweden, a country dominated by corporations, and has above-average crime rates compared to other EU countries, especially with above-average levels of consumer fraud, is not socialist. Nor is Denmark, the country ranked 112 in economic “freedom” by the Heritage 2018 Index of Economic Freedom with an economy that stands out as the “most free” economy in the world. Norway, who wins second place in the world for the most deaths by drug overdoses, and whose oil workers are currently on strike over pensions and pays, is not a socialist country. Iceland, the country that regularly slaughters whales and has a tourism industry destroying the environment isn’t socialist either. All of the Nordic countries are in the top 20 of the Heritage 2018 Index of Economic Freedom, and if you think the Nordic model is socialist because they have good social welfare plans, please re-evaluate your idea about what words mean.

You may think, “Okay, the Nords aren’t socialist. But the socialism you’re describing didn’t work out.” And to that I reply, you’re wrong. The Washington Post reported that Struggling Romanians yearn for communism, Gallup reported that Former Soviet Countries See More Harm From Breakup, and The Christian Science Monitor reported that Tajikistan pines for old Soviet Union strength. The Pew Research Center would begger to differ that Hungarians don’t miss the Hungarian People’s Republic. Will Stewart writes for Express: “Life was better in the Soviet Union than afterwards, according to a majority of people who had a clear memory and experience of living under communism in the USSR.” in his article titled, Back in the USSR: 64 per cent of Russians say life was better in the Soviet Union than now. The Balkan Insight reports: “A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia – ‘during the time of socialism’ ”. These successes aren’t just in the past, examples are with us now.

Socialism isn’t dead, and countries actively pursuing socialism are doing pretty well. Venezuela, though struggling due to a US-led economic war of lowering Saudi oil prices and intensifying sanctions, along with government mismanagement, not because of socialism, has built over 1,600 communes in which thousands of people live in and love. Even past US president Jimmy Carter praised their voting system, saying, “Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.” The Centre for Economic and Policy Research in Washington DC says since Hugo Chavez took office in Venezuela, and since Evo Morales did in Bolivia, poverty rates, extreme poverty rates, and unemployment rates, have all dropped significantly, while enrollment in education and minimum wages have increased significantly. Dr. Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization describes the DPRK’s healthcare system, saying, “…I can tell you they have something which most other developing countries would envy.” Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, has pretty much ended racism on their island, and the World Wildlife Fund said that Cuba is the only country in the world that has achieved sustainable development. The tiny island, even though blockaded, provides healthcare, education, and housing for all, free of charge. All of this is a gross simplification of some of the achievements of socialist nations, but the message is clear: socialism works.

No, present socialist nations aren’t perfect, nor are the Nordic countries complete hellholes, but the former doesn’t suffer from the common contradictions of capitalism that the latter does: the contradiction between public welfare and private appropriation, between various disparities of income and uneven geographical development, between technological advancements and human disposability, between overproduction and starvation, between ecological sustainability and expansion of industry. So I am tired of “socialists” pointing towards the Nords as a pillar of socialism, because it is not only wrong, but does a great disservice to the legacy of achievements of the socialist nations that bourgeois media demonizes; a legacy that we can, and must, seek to replicate, exclusive to the material conditions of our present world.

Australian government facing defeat over energy policy and company tax cuts

Mike Head

There has been renewed political turmoil since the Australian parliament resumed this week. During the long winter break, the Liberal-National Coalition government suffered serious blows in five simultaneous by-elections on July 28, two of which it did not even contest.

Such is the hostility toward the government that in one electorate, just north of Brisbane, the Queensland state capital, its vote fell below 30 percent. Neither of the two other main parliamentary parties, Labor and the Greens, fared much better in any of the seats, pointing to deepening political disaffection after years of falling wages, social spending cuts and soaring living costs.

Already, it is clear from the events of this week that the government’s two signature policies are in tatters. They are multi-billion dollar tax cuts for the largest companies and a so-called National Energy Guarantee (NEG) to resolve a decade-long impasse over energy policy, which has blocked corporate investment and sent electricity prices sky-rocketing.

Increasingly, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government seems incapable of legislating either of these policies, both long demanded by the financial elite.

Despite formal denials, the government is preparing to abandon the tax cuts, perhaps after one final token effort to get them through the Senate. The NEG bill, which has yet to be made public, seems doomed also, unless the opposition Labor Party backs it. At least 10 government members are reportedly threatening to cross the floor to vote against it.

The frustrations in the ruling class with the government, which has barely clung to power since winning only a one-seat majority in the 2016 election, are intensifying. These have been aggravated by the global uncertainties generated by the Trump administration’s pursuit of trade war and militarism, which particularly imperil Australian capitalism’s lucrative Chinese markets.

The turmoil wracking the government has now reached the point of media speculation that Turnbull could soon face a leadership challenge, or a defeat on the floor of parliament. Turnbull must call a federal election by May, but his government may not last that long.

Various groupings within the political establishment, including the Coalition’s most right-wing elements around Turnbull’s ousted predecessor Tony Abbott, and the pro-business Labor Party led by ex-trade union boss Bill Shorten, are positioning themselves to capitalise on the government’s anticipated fall.

Any government formed as a result of such machinations will be even more authoritarian and committed to imposing the requirements of big business than any of the five short-lived Labor and Coalition governments since the 2008 global financial breakdown.

Australian columnist Nikki Savva, a veteran former Coalition ministerial adviser, yesterday spotlighted Labor’s moves to reassure the corporate aristocracy that its policies will protect their profits, regardless of its campaign rhetoric about opposing inequality and handouts to the “big banks and transnationals.”

Savva offered an inside view of last week’s closed-door business briefing hosted by the Labor Party. Corporate executives paid $11,000 a head to confer and dine with Shorten and other shadow ministers, tipping more than $1 million into the party’s coffers. Savva wrote of “exuberant Labor apparatchiks” advising business leaders, “only half joking,” to “get accustomed to saying ‘Prime Minister Shorten’.”

At Tuesday’s Coalition party room meeting to endorse the government’s proposed NEG, Turnbull and his supporters secured a majority, but about a dozen MPs threatened to vote against the NEG bill in parliament, which would leave Turnbull relying on Labor’s support.

The dissidents include some prominent figures, such as ex-National Party leader Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Hastie, who chairs parliament’s security and intelligence committee. Several government ministers are rumoured to be considering resignation, including Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, the most senior member of the government’s conservative faction and regarded as a potential leadership challenger.

Abbott seems intent on bringing Turnbull down. He described the government’s explanations of the NEG as “merchant banker gobbledygook.” That was an obvious reference to Turnbull, a former merchant banker. Turnbull in turn branded opposition to the NEG as “idiocy.”

While bitter, these differences are not primarily personal. Abbott and his camp are hostile to the NEG because it cuts across the interests of the coal mining industry, which recently reclaimed its status as Australian capitalism’s No 1 export, expected to be worth $58.1 billion this financial year. Despite the closure of some antiquated coal-fired plants, coal continues to fuel about 63 percent of the country’s electricity supply.

Abbott and others are demanding the removal from the NEG of an already inadequate target of reducing carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2030, derived from the UN Paris climate accord. They are calling for the creation of a multi-billion dollar fund to subsidise the building of new, supposedly environmentally “clean,” coal-fired plants.

For years, the financial elite has been demanding bipartisan support for some kind of emissions-trading scheme to provide certainty for corporate investors by boosting profit prospects for power generation, including “clean” or green projects. Turnbull’s NEG is an attempt to straddle between the two camps by facilitating investment in renewable energy plants, while leaving the door open to more coal projects.

Acutely aware of intense popular unrest over retail electricity prices, which have almost doubled since 2005, the coal-aligned dissidents are also demanding that the NEG include a mechanism to cap prices.

Working-class households are paying hundreds of dollars a year extra for electricity, exacerbating a worsening social crisis, with household debt levels the highest in the world. Small businesses and farms are also being hit, while large corporations are able to negotiate lower bulk prices.

Turnbull and his supporters, backed by most of the financial elite, have fatuously claimed that the NEG will stoke investment in the industry, supposedly increasing supply and curbing prices.

Yesterday, however, in a last-ditch bid to avert defeat, Turnbull said the government would resort to what the Australian Financial Review called “heavy-handed intervention” to prevent electricity companies gouging customers. No details have been provided of this scheme, which the government is said to be scrambling to present to another Coalition party room meeting next Tuesday.

All talk of capping or curbing prices is a hoax. Household charges have gone through the roof because successive governments, both Coalition and Labor, have privatised the electricity industry over the past two decades, creating a national “market” in which oligopolies inevitably drive up prices.

The Keating Labor government initiated this process during the 1990s, claiming that a “national competition policy” would deliver significant benefits to consumers by providing incentives to producers to be efficient, innovate and lower their prices. In reality, rampant profiteering developed.

This drive deepened under the Labor government of Julia Gillard. Its 2012 Energy White Paper demanded that state governments privatise the remaining electricity assets, then estimated to be worth more than $100 billion, delivering bonanzas to the financial markets.

Over the past week alone, the “big three” power companies have announced record profits. AGL Energy, the biggest retailer and generator, reported that its before-tax operating profit jumped 20 percent to $2.23 billion. Origin reported a before-tax operating profit of $1.81 billion, up 21 percent, and Hong Kong-owned EnergyAustralia said its first-half after-tax profit rose to $375 million, from $129 million a year ago.

While seeking to exploit the government’s apparent death rattle, the Labor Party, backed by the trade unions, is positioning itself to continue the pro-business offensive that it mounted under Hawke and Keating from 1983 to 1996, and under Rudd and Gillard, with the backing of the Greens, from 2007 to 2013.

Vehicle crashes claim lives of 16 migrant workers in Italy

Allison Smith

In early August, 16 migrant agricultural workers were killed in two separate vehicle crashes in Southern Italy. All of the victims are non-European Union farm labourers working as pickers in the tomato fields near Foggia, in the region of Puglia.

The first crash happened on August 4 when a van driving four African migrants home from their shift collided with a truck carrying picked tomatoes. The second crash occurred August 6 when a passenger van carrying 14 migrants crashed head-on with a tomato lorry. Twelve migrants died on impact and three people were injured, including the van’s driver.

The causes of the crashes have not yet been determined, but witnesses of the August 6 crash report bodies were thrown all over the road, suggesting that the van wasn’t safe probably due to modifications to accommodate more passengers. The van, registered in Bulgaria to avoid paying the Italian road tax, was originally designed to carry nine passengers but was carrying 14 people.

In response to these deaths, hundreds of migrant workers marched to protest their dire working and living conditions, putting forth demands that contract rights of work be respected and calling for an end to slave-like conditions of migrants. They chanted, “No more deaths at work and never slaves!”

Many wore shirts bearing the image of African migrant worker Soumaila Sacko, who was murdered on 2 June while collecting scrap metal to use for his shanty in a local migrant ghetto.

It is estimated that more than 50,000 day labourers live in the province of Foggia during the harvest season, and officials believe that 50 percent of farmers in Foggia employ seasonal workers from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Italy under illegal conditions. Unofficial surveys by local migrant charities put the number as high as 90 percent.

Recruited to work by word of mouth and social media, such as WhatsApp, the vast majority of migrants live in ghettos without running water and electricity and inundated with mud when it rains and with little protection against the scorching summer sun. The ghettos are run in connection with the local mafia or “caporali” (gangmasters), which hire labourers out to local farmers, taking a hefty cut of the labourers’ pay in return for precarious and underpaid employment.

For each 300-kilo box of tomatoes filled by the workers, the landowner gives €5 to a middleman who then pays the gangmaster. After they both take their cut, the worker gets €3. Migrants are then charged €5 for transport to and from the fields and €5 or more for food.

Laws passed in recent years call for prison sentences for those recruiting and exploiting migrant workers, and yet it is estimated that up to 300,000 workers are employed illegally. Farmers argue that they are squeezed by the retail market, require a fully flexible workforce, and don’t speak the same language as migrants, thus the need to maintain low wages, zero-hour contracts, and the caporalato system.

The right-wing policies of the Lega/Five Star movement coalition government support the “arguments” of the farmers. The government denies migrants every protection and fundamental right and sends a strong signal to enterprises and landowners that in dealing with the migrant workers they have a free hand and nothing to fear from the authorities. The deadly vehicle crashes—caused by sheer greed for profit at the expense of the labourers—are by no means separated from the extremely right-wing course of the government in Rome.

Even before Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was appointed in June, the coalition announced that Italy will deport half a million refugees within 18 months and imprison in detention centres all refugees who are without proper permits. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister and the head of Lega, proclaimed: “We tell all illegals: The party is over!” They should “pack their bags.”

After the deaths last week, Conte, who was born and raised near Foggia, also announced a visit to Foggia to “personally assess the situation” but offered no progressive plan to address the dire circumstances of migrants.

Minister of Economic Development, Labour and Social Policies Luigi Di Maio issued the usual hollow promises to address migrant issues, saying that he would deploy “more inspectors to fight the caporalato.”

President of the Pulia region, Michele Emiliano (Democratic Party), echoing Di Maio, hypocritically described the ghettos as being “controlled by criminal organizations dedicated to prostitution, drug dealing, and caporali,” and said he intends to close them and move evicted migrants into structures provided by the local government. However, there is not nearly enough public housing to accommodate thousands of migrants should they be evicted. Closing the ghettos merely serves to criminalise poverty.

For their part, the trade unions have done nothing to end the exploitation of migrant workers, let alone, address the most basic needs of workers’ contract rights, health and safety regulations, humane accommodation, and the construction of public transport. The unions only serve to create illusions of pressuring the government to reform the exploitative agricultural system.

The main migrant union, Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), which proclaims it is an incorruptible, left alternative to the established trade unions, is dominated by petty-bourgeois groups, including one wing of Rifondazione (PRC), Maoists and the organisation Sinistra Critica—affiliated to the Pabloite United Secretariat. At its demonstration in 2010, the UBS even tolerated the presence of the former minister of social solidarity in the Prodi government, Paolo Ferrero (PRC), who had agreed to legislation wiping out traditional pension rights and personally drew up the first deportation lists for Sinti and Roma.

Facebook censors Telesur and Venezuela Analysis

Andrea Lobo 

Monday evening, the English language page of the television network Telesur, which is published by the Venezuelan government, was taken down by Facebook in a direct act of censorship of content critical of US government policy. After administrators received a notice that the Telesur English page had violated Facebook’s “Terms of Use,” the page reappeared two days later, with Facebook claiming, in an unserious and unconvincing manner, “that there was instability on the platform, which caused this problem, but now everything should be in order.”

The Facebook page of another media outlet aligned politically with the Venezuelan government, Venezuela Analysis, which is based in New York, was also temporarily taken down on August 9, only four days before, for allegedly violating “Facebook Pages Terms.” The site’s administrators, however, have not received any explanation about the suspension.

Since last year, Facebook has been carrying out a campaign to censor information and perspectives at odds with the official narrative of the US government by expunging, intimidating and threatening users that publish such content. Facebook has justified these actions by charging users with arbitrary terms like being “divisive,” “extremist” and “inauthentic,” while not presenting any evidence to substantiate these charges.

The administrator of the popular Facebook page Revolution News, James Wood, received a “publishing authorization” request—a threat to shut down the page unless Wood confirmed his country location by August 28—seconds after posting an article about the removal of the Telesur English page. Several other Facebook pages that publish content critical of US policy, including Anti-Media, have reported receiving the same notice.

On July 31, Facebook announced that it was deleting 32 pages, including an event page promoting an anti-fascist demonstration and the page of a group organizing a rally against Trump’s separation of undocumented families, both in Washington D.C. The Atlantic Council, a think tank tied to the US intelligence apparatus that has been working closely with Facebook in conducting its censorship campaign, charged, without presenting any evidence, that the pages removed sought to advance “Russian information operations” and “to trigger standoffs between genuine Americans, bringing the risk of real-life violence from false stories.”

Such censorship measures, however, seek only to block the development of opposition to US militarism, the government’s fascistic attacks against immigrants, police violence, inequality, and other forms of social reaction.

While some of the pages censored by Facebook pertained to far-right groups, such as that of Alex Jones in the United States and accounts of the Free Brazil Movement, these steps seek fundamentally to establish the precedent for attacking freedom of speech and expanding censorship against left-wing political views and movements.

On the same day Telesur was suspended, Trump signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act, which defines a “United States-based foreign media outlet” as one that “produces or distributes video programming … that is transmitted, or is intended for transmission, by a multichannel video programming distributor to consumers in the United States,” suggesting that the outlet doesn’t need to be physically based in the US.

It adds that such an outlet would be considered a foreign agent and be required to provide the Federal Communications Commission with a description of its relationship with any foreign government.

News commentators have suggested that the Qatar-based Al Jazeera will be the first target. However, in the case of Telesur, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions received a letter from South Carolina Republican Congressman Joe Wilson in February requesting that he investigate whether Telesur can be required to register as a foreign agent. Last November, the network RT America, which is also critical of US foreign policy and receives funding from the Russian government, was forced to register as a foreign agent.

While not an independent media outlet, Telesur has reported critically on the catastrophes wrought by US foreign policy around the world. Currently, the Trump administration is escalating the use of trade war measures, economic sanctions, regime-change operations and military confrontations to advance US geopolitical interests worldwide, pushing entire economies off the abyss, including in Venezuela, Turkey, and Iran, and destroying entire societies, as in Yemen, Libya, Syria and Iraq.

Created in 2005, Telesur is based in Caracas, Venezuela, and is financed directly by the governments of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Uruguay. The Argentine and Ecuadorian states stopped funding the network after the election of right-wing governments more closely aligned with Washington, respectively those of Mauricio Macri and Lenín Moreno.

The censorship by Facebook of the Chavista media outlets comes amid an intensified campaign by Washington to undermine the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro. The US government has imposed economic sanctions against the financial operations of individual military and government officials and PDVSA, the state oil company, the main source of government income, deepening the social catastrophe in the already crisis-ridden economy.

In a statement last week, Venezuela Analysis inferred that Facebook’s suspension was a response to its recent coverage of the apparent drone assassination attempt against Maduro on August 4. Two days before being temporarily censored, the site charged the Venezuelan opposition, “its northern masters and the latter’s regional puppets,” with responsibility for the incident.

Meanwhile, top US administration officials have held increasingly frequent meetings this year with Latin American leaders to strengthen military ties, highlighting in each session efforts to coordinate further actions against the Maduro government, with reports that Trump himself has suggested to regional presidents a direct military intervention to overthrow the Venezuelan government.

As the crisis in Venezuela deepens, the Maduro administration has become increasingly dependent on loans from Chinese and Russian firms in exchange for shares in PDVSA and its subsidiaries and rights to exploit the petroleum deposits in the Orinoco River Basin, the largest in the world. Not only would US-based oil conglomerates like to regain control over these vast resources, but the Pentagon has made explicit its priority of undermining the economic interests of Beijing and Moscow in region, considering them “revisionist powers” that challenge the US-led international order.

The specific provision in the recent Defense Authorization Act calling for the identification of “foreign” media outlets that distribute content to “consumers in the United States” is significant. As opposition to capitalism, and interest in socialism and militancy grow among workers and youth in the United States, the ruling corporate and financial oligarchy fears above all a massive mobilization against the domestic and foreign policy of US imperialism.

In response, it has moved ever more aggressively to censor left-wing, progressive, socialist and anti-war media outlets, targeting, in particular, the World Socialist Web Site.

While this process has been spearheaded by the US intelligence and political establishment, regimes across the world, including the Maduro government in Venezuela, have been implementing their own online censorship against political opposition, with the collaboration of the same technology corporations.

This underscores the urgent and essential character of the fight against internet censorship and for the defense of all democratic rights as the international working class enters into struggle against the policies of the capitalist ruling class.

New CDC estimates: A record 72,000 US drug overdose deaths in 2017

Kate Randall

Drug overdose deaths in the US topped 72,000 in 2017, according to new provisional estimates released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This staggering figure translates into about 200 drug overdose deaths every day, or about one every eight minutes.

The new CDC estimates are 6,000 deaths more than 2016 estimates, a rise of 9.5 percent. This has been primarily driven by a continued rise of deaths involving synthetic opioids, a category of drugs that includes fentanyl. Nearly 30,000 deaths involved these drugs in 2017, an increase of more than 9,000 (nearly 50 percent) over the previous year, according to preliminary data.

This catastrophic toll of opioid deaths casts a grim light on the state of America in the 21st century. At its root lies a society characterized by vast social inequality, corporate greed and government indifference. While the opioid crisis spares no segment of society, the most profoundly affected are workers and the poor, along with the communities where they live.

Deaths involving the stimulant cocaine also rose significantly, placing them on par with heroin and the category of natural opiates including painkillers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone. The CDC estimates suggest that deaths involving the latter two drugs appear to have flattened out.

The highest mortality rates in 2017 were distributed similarly to previous years, with parts of Appalachia and New England showing the largest figures. West Virginia again saw the highest death rates, with 58.7 overdose deaths per 100,000 residents, followed by the District of Columbia (50.4), Pennsylvania (44.2), Ohio (44.0) and Maryland (37.9). Nebraska had the lowest rate, 8.2 deaths per 100,000, one-seventh the West Virginia rate.

Two states with relatively high rates of overdose deaths, Vermont and Massachusetts, saw some decreases. The CDC credits this decrease to a leveling off of synthetic opioid availability and a modest increase in these states of funding for programs to fight addiction and provide treatment and rehabilitation.

Driving the increase in overdose deaths is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is roughly 50 times more potent that heroin. It is marketed under more than a dozen brand names in the US. Nebraska became the first state to use fentanyl in a state-sanctioned killing, using it Tuesday to execute Carey Dean Moore.

Fentanyl is also made illegally relatively easily and mixed with black market supplies of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines and anti-anxiety medicines known as benzodiazepines. Individuals who have become addicted to prescription opioids often turn to illegally manufactured fentanyl, or related drugs that can be far more potent and dangerous, when prescription opioids are not available. Users cannot know the potency of such drugs or drug mixtures and are more likely to overdose.

The CDC reports that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS), which identifies drugs from submissions tested for analysis, estimated that submissions testing positive have included two extremely potent drugs related to fentanyl, carfentanil and 3-methylfentanyl, which are 100 and 4 times more potent than fentanyl, respectively.

Purdue Pharma has drawn widespread criticism for its aggressive marketing and sale of the opioid OxyContin, which has a high potential for abuse, particularly for those with a history of addiction. The company also produces pain medications such as hydromorphone, oxycodone, fentanyl, codeine and hydrocodone.

Regions with high levels of unemployment and poverty have been the target of drug distributors, shipping vast quantities of opioid painkillers to these areas. For example, McKesson Corporation shipped 151 million doses of oxycodone and hydrocodone between 2007 and 2012 to West Virginia, the state with the highest rate of overdose mortality.

Workers, both employed and unemployed, have found themselves in the grip of the opioid crisis. In an interview with Vox.com, Beth Macy, author of the new book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, describes the high levels of addiction in Machias, Maine, an early center of the opioid crisis. People in this logging and fishing community were already on painkillers from injuries due to these jobs and then became addicted to opioids—both prescription and illegal—and continue to overdose at high rates.

A study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health examined 4,302 opioid deaths from 2011 to 2015 among workers in all occupations in the state. It found that construction workers were six times more likely to die from opioid overdoses than the average worker, and that one in three construction-worker deaths were the result of overdoses.

There are fewer workers in farming, fishing and forestry in Massachusetts, but the report found these jobs also had an opioid mortality rate five times the average. The study found a link between higher rates of opioid abuse in occupations where back injuries are more common and paid sick leave is less so. In other words, workers become addicted to drugs—and face potential overdose—when they are forced to choose between working through pain or suffering a loss of wages.

Conservative estimates place the number of Americans with opioid abuse disorder at 2.6 million, but the real total is undoubtedly higher. To the 72,000 who succumbed to drug overdose in 2017 must be added those directly impacted by the crisis—family members, friends, coworkers, medical responders, social workers, treatment center workers, and many others.

Drug overdoses are part of a greater social crisis that is claiming the lives of increasing numbers. In December 2017, the CDC released reports revealing that life expectancy of the American working class is declining due to an increase in both drug overdoses and suicides. “Deaths of despair”—overdoses, suicides, alcohol-related deaths—are causing a dramatic increase in the mortality rate among those under the age of 44.

The decline in life expectancy, a fundamental measure of social progress, is an indication of both American capitalism’s decline and the sharp intensification of social inequality. While the richest five percent of the population owns 67 percent of the wealth, the poorest 60 percent owns just 1 percent.

Of the 72,000 Americans who died in drug overdoses in 2017, workers and the poor were the most affected. By contrast, the wealthiest Americans have access to the best medical care and technology available, and as a result live on average 20 years longer than the poorest members of US society.

The rise in drug overdoses is the product of a bipartisan assault of the social gains of the working class. Over the past 40 years, both the Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a conscious strategy to claw back the gains won by the working class in the first half of the 20th century. The response of both the Obama and Trump administrations to this crisis has amounted to a combination of indifference and distain for the lives lost.

The Obama administration slashed the number of DEA cases brought against drug distributors by 69.5 percent between 2011 and 2014. The Trump administration last year declared the opioid epidemic a “public health emergency,” but then allocated no new funding to the states to address it. Yet hundreds of billions are budgeted to fund the myriad wars prosecuted by the US military and for the persecution of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A health emergency on the scale of the drug epidemic requires an emergency, socialist response. Billions of dollars must be allocated to fund rehabilitation centers, utilizing the latest scientific treatments methods. The wealth of the drug manufacturers must be expropriated and their facilities placed under the control of the working class, as part of a socialized health care system that provides free health care for all.

Morality Tales in US Public Life?

Barbara Nimri Aziz

Many Americans who think their country is unquestionably the greatest have been chagrined by recent events that brought them to a new low point. The treatment of families seeking asylum at our southern border with forced separation of children from parents, some shipped to distant parts of the country, is shocking, embarrassing and reprehensible. Overwhelmingly, whatever their political leanings, people want that policy reversed. Some blame the Trump administration, others runaway ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) procedures, others inept management.

Do those gross measures mark the end of what was known as The American Dream? Most Americans are unwilling to see the morality of the policy, but a conservative British weekly views this immigration fiasco though a moral lens, referring to an “ill-fated moral debasement of American values”. The article attributes that state of disgrace specifically to the current US administration, pointing to the nation’s “moral shortcomings…. under Trump… Though America has experienced many moral corrections, from abolitionism to the civil rights movement, they have never come (to this) emetic moment…”, the feeling of revulsion, it charges. Notwithstanding many Americans’ disgust over the caging and separation of children, The Economist’s invocation of moral standards is largely unvoiced within the USA. Even though morality underlies many of our current woes.

Why is it impolite to speak about moral markers in our society? Maybe morality is simply redundant today. Yet, without a moral compass, we may be becoming lost. Consensus is impossible; so too, any dignified leadership. Anything seems acceptable, evidenced by the ongoing gun violence and unattended massacres, uncontrolled police shootings of Black men and ugly online dialogue.

We’re not talking about sin with its theological connotations. Morals can operate in the secular sphere too, within culture. Ask any parent, journalist or teacher.

Right and wrong is a hard business for anyone to address nowadays, especially in so-called liberal circles. The perceived immorality of the US leader is answered by Robert DeNiro shouting “F–k You Donald Trump”, on stage at the Tony Awards. Is DeNiro exhibiting moral strength by this declaration? Did he reflect on his action beforehand? There were cheers from his audience; but then what? Did the Hollywood star suffer any retaliation? Would DeNiro have made the same declaration against movie mogul Harvey Weinstein or fellow actor Morgan Freeman when their crimes and misdemeanors were exposed? Has DeNiro now become an activist? And is this all his declaration signifies?

And what about Roseanne Barr’s ugly tweet, her racist statement about former White House advisor Valerie Jarrett? Oh that’s different. Is it? Yes, to many of ‘us’, such utterances are offensive. Yet we are told Barr was already known for her indiscretions and personal attacks. With that tweet, she crossed a line and her show was cancelled. Yet Barr is still sought after by TV hosts and to many she remains a hero.

Everyone seems to be pushing the envelop—to test today’s moral limits. How much can we offend? How wild can we look? How much dare we share of our phone snaps? How much violence can be created and tolerated as entertainment, or art? How much verbal abuse in the name of free speech; how much sexual or racial abuse to get or to keep a job?

The current occupant of the White House is a moralistic man. Yes. Calling others boorish names and winning accolades for his rudeness is nasty and insulting, but at the same time moralistic—to some. Your and my disgust is matched it seems, by others’ applause. Strange times.

All this has me wondering: What is activism? And what’s the relation of political activism to cultural morality? I’m trying to understand this as a student of culture as well as a citizen of a country known for its openness. Can a healthy culture have no moral limits, whether it’s the behavior of its immigration officials, soldiers or celebrities?

We speak about social behaviors as unethical or corrupt, decent or distasteful, respectable or dishonorable, progressive or illiberal (whatever illiberal means). Morality itself seems to be absent from our vocabulary, although it surely underlies all these attributes. Is there just too much borderline conduct flowing through our fluid, censor-free culture, that no mooring can contain it?

Perusal of the Moral Monday campaign of Rev. William Barber tarted my reflections on morals. Moral Monday evolved into The Poor People’s Campaign (PPC): A National Call for Moral Revivalled by Barber. Bruce Dixon writes critically of Barber, faulting him for blaming everything on immoral persons and policies, on lack of moral commitment. Barber calls for a cleansing of America with a “massive moral rest”, a “moral resistance”.

“The problem”, Dixon maintains, “is that labeling your political opponents, their leaders, their misguided values and their persons as ‘immoral’ is never a persuasive political tactic. It might make those already on your side feel nice and comfy to know they’re all moral and the other guys are not.” Dixon makes a worthy point. Especially today, when Americans are more aware than ever of increasingly economic, social and ideological polarization. So-called liberals have become sacrosanct about their own access to ‘truth’ while so-called conservatives, angry at how they are regarded and maligned, aggressively promote their own truth.

Let’s not forget how yesterday’s immoral activists are later sanctified. Behavior (e.g. homosexuality) once attacked as sick and immoral eventually becomes codified into law. Our most esteemed American (moral) leader Martin Luther King Jr. was for many years vilified; then, when King moved beyond domestic injustices and called the American war in Vietnam immoral:– well, that was unpatriotic which in some circles is treasonous. That charge was leveled at another memorialized leader, Malcolm X. He crossed a moral line when he defined Black Americans’ struggle for justice as not their civil right, but their ‘human right’. In that declaration Malik Shabazz (X) challenged American moral standards.

During that same era when cultural standards were in flux, as they are today, and when military conscription was in force, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the US military to fight against Vietnamese: “Shoot them for what? They never called me Ni..er; they never lynched me…never set dogs against me…”, he argued. Ali’s stand so challenged American morals that he was stripped of his boxing titles and banned from boxing– punishment hard to fathom today.

Or is it? Ali’s now forgotten moral stance is in my view comparable to football star Colin Kaepernick’s decision to place a knee on the ground instead of a hand on his heart as others do for the US national anthem. The moral principle on which he acted – injustice, specifically police brutalization of Black and Latino citizens–was eclipsed in the ensuing controversy. (In time, it will become enshrined in US history.)

Try to put yourself in Kaepernick’s position leading up to his declaration. He felt compelled to speak, somehow. Did he consult others–his religious guide, his family, fellow players? Did he ask others to join him? Did he consider the repercussions? What a supreme moral act! It made Kaepernick a hero for many (including this non-football fan); he was Amnesty International’s 2018 Ambassador of Conscience. Meanwhile he was fired from his job, and, I would argue, in its moralist retort, the National Football League banned players from ‘taking a knee’ in public. Although we don’t hear any charge of immorality against Kaepernick, some call his action unpatriotic– a grave allegation in the USA. Kaepernick himself, accepting the AI award, invokes moral issues behind his action, just as Ali did in his defense after his banishment from boxing in 1966.

That the names of music, sports and film celebrities come into our discussion of activism and morality may not be accidental. Favorable or not, celebrity is where morality today is defined and disseminated. Author Peter King has 4.8 million followers; actor Anne Hathaway has 12+ million instagram fans; Sean Hannity’s FB friends may exceed those numbers. Then there’s The Donald. And don’t forget what his celebrity led too.

NASA spacecraft launched for close-up study of the Sun

Bryan Dyne

The Parker Solar Probe was launched early Sunday morning and has begun its three-month journey to get closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft.

Artist's conception of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

For the first time, a spacecraft will venture into the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, to take measurements of the complex thermal and magnetic interactions that have been observed from afar in different forms for more than one and a half centuries. The probe will study the flow of heat into the corona, examine the structure and motion of the solar wind and investigate the mechanisms that transport and accelerate particles from the Sun’s surface to Earth’s orbit and beyond.

Once it is fully deployed, the Parker Solar Probe will join the ten other spacecraft that are currently studying different aspects of the Sun and its influence on Earth and the solar system in general. The total cost is estimated at $1.5 billion over the lifetime of the mission, about a tenth of the US Navy’s new Gerald R. Ford-class supercarrier.

During its first week of operations, the spacecraft will deploy its high-gain antenna for ship-to-Earth communications and its magnetometer boom, which will study changes in the solar magnetic field.

Later, the craft’s hundreds of researchers, engineers and technicians will begin the four-week process of calibrating five main scientific instruments and ensuring that all flight systems are ready to face the extreme heat that the probe will experience when it is studying the Sun at a distance of 24 million kilometers, half the distance of Mercury’s orbit. The first close-up observations are expected to begin by December.

The mission is slated to last until 2024, using a series of seven flybys of Venus to get progressively closer to the Sun. At its closest approach, the probe will dive to just 6 million kilometers away from the Sun and will whip around the star at 692,000 kilometers per hour. For comparison, the New Horizons mission to Pluto is only traveling out of the Solar System at just under 51,000 kilometers per hour.

The solar corona as seen from Earth during the 2017 total solar eclipse. Credit: Michael S Adler

To survive the intense radiation so close to the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe uses a specially designed heat shield that has to resist radiation that is 475 times the intensity Earth receives. The heat shield consists of a layer of highly reflective aluminum oxide, a carbon-carbon composite and a carbon foam, which reduces temperatures of 1,370 degrees Celsius (hotter than lava erupting from a volcano) to about 30 degrees Celsius (slightly above room temperature).

While this technology is not new, it places enormous constraints on the operations of the instruments because they must study the corona and magnetic field while avoiding direct sunlight, under conditions where the Sun’s apparent disk is 28 times as large as it appears from Earth.

The protection of the instruments also depends on onboard algorithms to constantly correct the spacecraft’s orientation. As the spacecraft flies around the Sun, it is too far away to be controlled by anyone on Earth and so must correct the probe’s orientation without any human aid. And unlike a landing on Mars, which requires computer guidance and correction for about seven minutes, Parker Solar Probe will have to correct its course by itself for seven years.

Once the spacecraft begins to collect data, it will provide critical insights into solving two problems in solar physics that have puzzled astronomers for decades: the hot temperatures of the corona and the fast speeds of the solar wind.

The corona is the thin outer layer of the Sun’s atmosphere. It consists of free electrons and ions that flow around the Sun and out from it in patterns guided by the Sun’s myriad and constantly fluctuating magnetic fields. Much of the solar activity that reaches Earth originates in the corona and can interfere with radio communications, harm satellites and astronauts and even break power grids and oil pipelines. A full understanding of the corona is similar to understanding climate patterns on Earth, both interesting from a pure research standpoint and essential to ensure the continued functioning of society.

While the first scientific observations of the corona were made in 1869, the results were not understood until 1940, when Swedish physicist Bengt Edlén determined that the light from the corona revealed the presence of iron atoms that had 13 out of their 26 electrons stripped off. Using the developments in quantum mechanics in the preceding three decades, Edlén calculated that the energy required to remove so many electrons from iron meant that the temperature of the corona had to be at least one million degrees Celsius.

There was immediate skepticism of the result. Temperatures in the core of the Sun, the source of the star’s energy, reach fifteen million degrees Celsius, but they steadily decrease to about six thousand degrees Celsius on its surface. It was counterintuitive that the temperature further from the Sun’s core would increase. As every observation since then has confirmed, however, going from the surface of the Sun into the corona, the temperature spikes to between one and ten million degrees Celsius, akin to moving away from a fire and yet getting hotter.

The solar wind emanates from the corona and interacts with Earth's magnetic field. Credit: NASA

There are currently three main hypotheses to explain this transfer of heat, including slow-moving sound waves that travel between different layers of the Sun’s atmosphere, energy stored and transferred via magnetic fields and small jets of particles originating from just above the Sun’s surface. None of them have been wholly rejected or confirmed and in fact all may play a role in powering the corona.

The speed of the solar wind is related to the high coronal temperature. In 1958, the spacecraft’s namesake Eugene Parker (1927- ) predicted that material in the corona is so hot that it can escape the Sun’s gravity and accelerate into the Solar System. This was confirmed a year later by data collected by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 1 and analysis done by Konstantin Gringauz. The results were replicated by the Soviet Luna 2, Luna 3, and Venera 1, and the NASA spacecraft Mariner 2.

Continued work predicted that these particles begin accelerating 2.8 million kilometers above the surface of the Sun. This was the accepted theory until the 1990s when observations by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft showed that the acceleration of the solar wind occurred four times closer to the Sun than Parker’s prediction. Given that, there must be something more than the heat of the corona driving the solar wind.

There have been several ground- and space-based experiments to try to resolve this discrepancy, but none have been so far successful. The leading hypotheses involve still unknown magnetic and gravitational interactions between particles in the corona and the Sun as a whole.