Full employment is a turning point for capitalism, Unemployment creates exploitation of workers

Aleksandar Šarović

The owners of capital favour unemployment, because the unemployed workers have to accept poorly paid jobs to be able to feed their families. A higher unemployment rate produces cheaper labour. Unemployment is not difficult to maintain because employers most often do not need to hire employees. Also, the owners of capital support political parties that keep unemployment through economic policy. It starts with importing cheap labour and ends with rising interest rates. This is how unemployment becomes a state policy and how state policy maintains the exploitation of workers. All the exploitation of workers has its origin in unemployment. I wrote more about it in the article: Let’s remove unemployment.

The rich people have imposed believing that unemployment is an unavoidable price, which must be paid for technological development. They have pressured economic science to accept that 0% of unemployment is not a positive thing, which they accomplished. The capitalists have found an unemployment rate of about 5% the most convenient to them so that 5% of unemployment has become a “normal” state in capitalist society. This “normal” state makes workers dependent on capitalists. It allows the exploitation of workers through low labour costs, while the total purchasing power of workers is still large enough to produce profits for private companies. However, such a policy has enlarged the gap between rich and poor what increases problems in society.

We can eliminate unemployment

We may inverse the process of unemployment by shorter work hours. Reducing work hours by 5% should eliminate 5% unemployment. In this way, workers will become more demanded by employers. When workers are not available on the market, employers who need new workers will have to get them from other employers by raising their salaries. Competition among employers will start a chain reaction in which workers’ wages will gradually grow. It would create a fair market for work with a steady demand for all workers. Removing of unemployment will remove the exploitation of workers.

We can reach even negative unemployment

The rise in worker salaries may be accelerated by creating negative unemployment. Negative unemployment means creating a work environment with a permanent lack of workers. Reversing a 5% unemployment with the same negative unemployment would mean the complete elimination of unemployment plus the creation of 5% work posts, which cannot get workers because they do not exist. It would require shorter work hours of all workers for around 10%. Such a measure would require reducing 8 hours workday to approximately 7 hours (along with preventing work imports).

Empty workplaces will put workers in a privileged position, in which employers have been from ever, and this will force employers to raise worker salaries more intensively. It would initialize a chain reaction in which workers’ wages would grow significantly.

History proved that negative unemployment rose workers’ salaries

The rising of workers’ wages in the negative unemployment environment was proved in the 14th Century when the Black Death killed one-third of the European population. Suddenly, the crops in the fields languished because there were not enough people to harvest them. “The shortage of servants, craftsmen, and workmen, and of agricultural workers and labourers, left a great many lords and people without service and attendance.” Suddenly workers and their labour were in much higher demand, enabling those who survived the Black Death to be in a much better position to negotiate work conditions. The shortage of workers increased the workers’ wages.

At Cuxham (Oxfordshire, England), a plowman demanded from his Lord a payment three times greater in 1350 than in the previous year ( The Economic Impact of the Black Death, Economic History Association).

“In Parliament, in 1351 the Commons petitioned Edward III for a more resolute and effective response. They complained that “servants completely disregard the said ordinance in the interests of their ease and greed and that they withhold their services to great men and others unless they have liveries and wages twice or three times as great as [prior to the plague] to the serious damage of the great men and impoverishment of all members of the said commons.”” (Michael Bennett, Australian Journal of Law and Society, 1995, The Impact of the Black Death on English Legal History, Page 197)

Politics can create a better capitalism

According to this historical example, if a political party wins an election offering a reduction of work to 5 hours per day, the lack of workers would increase workers’ salaries 2-3 times per hour in one year. The daily wages of workers would rise 30-90% for just a 5-hour shift. Workers would work shorter hours and earn much more.

Today we have accepted 8 hours workday suggested by Robert Owen at the beginning of the 19th Century.  Is there any particular reason for 8 hours workday? No, it is just a constant value society accepted and got used to. Besides providing full employment, the workday should be a function variable that determines people’s work needs. If workers would like to work less, then work hours should be shorter and vice versa. The length of work hours may de democratically expressed by people or by political parties. Political parties should offer the best period of full-time work for the people, and it would be one of the factors which make them elected.

The length of a workday can undoubtedly be a very powerful and the most important regulator of the free market. The minimum wage will not be needed. Full employment will bring higher salaries to all workers, not just for minimum wage. It will result in higher purchasing power of people, allowing the economy to grow and the capitalist to profit more. No other regulation besides work hours will be needed for creating an ethical distribution of wealth in the economy.

Democratically chosen work hours will create a fair market of work, which will balance the demand and supply of work and provide just incomes. It will establish a good society as well and a much brighter future for humankind. It will become a turning point for capitalism, making it a decent social system.

Conspiracy of the rich prevents a better capitalism

Nothing that I wrote here is rocket science. Shorter work hours are even a natural solution in the developed automation processes. How come no one has offered shorter work hours to people? That is because rich people prevent the idea of shorter work hours coming to workers. The rich people rule over workers by imposing fear for their existence. The less independent workers are, the more power the rich have over them. Eliminating fear of unemployment means eliminating the power of rich people, and this is the worse that might happen to them. Rich people have used their power of influence in policy, science, and media to prevent progressive ideas from coming.

Now I will present how well organized and persistent rich people are in preventing a just society. The picture above shows one demonstration calling for the employment of people. The organizer was Bail Out the People, which can be seen on paroles the demonstrators carry. The organization probably did not survive. However, their web site still exists, but now it is about cosmetics. It looks fake. The question is, why would a cosmetic magazine buy the name of an unsuccessful organization which has nothing to do with cosmetics? The answer is, there is no small thing the rich will hesitate to do to destroy an idea pointing to social justice.

All the knowledge we use today has been imposed on people by the power of authorities. This means all the knowledge we have accepted is useful to authorities and not necessary to people. Today intense propaganda of the rich produces all that we know. So that the knowledge we have certainly serve the rich and not necessary for us. But there is worse than that, people have been systematically forced to accept knowledge all their lives so that most of the people have not developed the skill to recognize the truth if authorities do not support it. This means they cannot escape from an inferior position in society. People do what they are told to do thousands of times. This is how the rich build the so-called sheep mentality of people.

It is not that people who accepted imposed knowledge do not understand new ideas. The problem is they cannot reach the essence of the problem. They cannot distinguish important information which solves problems among million useless pieces of information. People do understand that shorter work hours would increase worker salaries. But they do not believe in it, otherwise “authorities” would undoubtedly implement it and “improve” society. Or, there must exist some problems that prevent such “improvement of society,” which I did not take into consideration. And by being incapable of searching for an essence, they give up before even tried to find an escape for the problems. Otherwise, people would implement shorter work hours a long time ago, which would improve their lives and capitalism itself.

What makes me capable of offering a better world?

I did not believe in knowledge imposed by authorities, which made me stop believing in authorities. I have searched for the truth and essence all my life. It was not my conscious decision; it was something built in me. The freedom of thoughts had given me a great advantage, which ordinary people who follow rules of authorities do not have. It helped me create the most significant social conclusion ever: “Nothing built on unequal human rights can work, and everything built on equal human rights will work perfectly.” This discovery was so vital that I decided to give up on my profession of architecture right after graduation and to work on building a bright future of humankind.

It took me ten years to develop how equal human rights will create a good society and to present my findings in the book Humanism – A Philosophic-Ethical-Political-Economic Study of the Development of the Society. I was very concerned about the objectivity of my work, and this made my work tough. In the last 27 years, I have performed countless discussions about the bright future of humankind, and I never lost one. It confirmed my objectivity, which means my book indeed most likely presents the bright future of humanity. The work also developed my sense of righteousness. I do not need to think about problems anymore; I can feel the right path, which makes me eliminate unimportant information and not getting wrong.

It helped me see that the rich not only prevent the truth from coming but also deceive people by supporting ideas that could not improve society. For example, the rich have helped the Marxist revolution knowingly it could not improve society. Revolutions were much better solutions to the rich than let people come up with the conclusion that a real escape from exploitation lies in shorter work hours. By supporting Marx, the rich have successfully prevented a better society for more than 100 years, and they still do. Marxists cannot accept new left ideas that reject Marxism, and therefore, they prevent the bright future of humankind. I wrote about it in the article: Marx still prevents the progress of society. The wealthy conspirators are masters of deception. I have presented the whole conspiracy of the rich in the article: Jacob Rothschild is Guilty for the Conspiracy Against Humankind.

Capital may departure from a fair market of work

The starting problem of eliminating unemployment and making the economy grow lies in the fact that employers do not like to increase worker salaries. Employers may escape from expensive workers in full employment society by the departure of their capital out of the country. We need to understand that capitalism has established laws that give more freedom to capital than to workers, and that needs to change. At least the rules need to provide the same rights to capital as to workers.

Any departure of capital brings trouble to a domestic economy, which will result in closing companies and more unemployed workers. To make all employed, it would require an additional reduction in the workers’ work hours. Therefore, economic security would still be guaranteed to all people. The shortening of working hours will reduce the incomes of workers, but they would remain high enough to provide a decent life.

Capitalism has spent a lot of energy on developing the consumer mentality, which is very unnecessary. It also established an egotistical character trait of workers, which is wrong. Today’s workers already have a higher living standard than kings had in the Middle Ages. The kings did not have cars, internet, phones, bathrooms, medical healing, international food, etc. Should not workers be more satisfied with their lives today than kings in the Middle Ages? Are they?

No, they are not. Firstly, satisfaction does not depend on wealth only. And secondly, the system in which workers live does not let them feel secure. Losing a job might take all the benefits from workers, which concerns them permanently. The solidarity coming from a shortening of work hours will eliminate this fear and will let people live worry-free. Free people will discover what kind of life best benefit to them.

Developed market of work will create socialism 

Will a reduction of work hours reduce the productivity of work? Hardly. Quantity of work hours is just one of the factors that determine productivity. A much more important fact is the quality of work, such as rationality and creativity of work. Can more equalized salaries destimulate work effort? Well, it can, but we may implement a new stimulation to work significantly higher than wages might be.

We can easily find the stimulation for work in our very culture. We are taught by capitalism to love competitions and to be the winners brings enormous satisfaction to us. People do not hesitate to involve an extreme effort to reach such a goal. Why would not we open competitions for every public workplace at any time? I know it sounds impossible because such a division of labour never existed. But the realization of it is just a technical problem.

The system I have developed will effectively evaluate the productivity of work offers, define the job responsibilities of workers, and harmonize rewards for work. In short, the workers who offer the highest productivity and accountability, and demand the lowest salary will get the job. It would be nothing else but a developed market of work. However, it will require time for the market of work to develop enough and be accepted by people.

It will stimulate workers to work much more than anyone can imagine today, while the existence of workers would never be endangered. It would establish such a rigid form of responsibility that no one would dare to offer work proposals they would not be able to meet. The market will also regulate worker salaries in the most objective way. It would increase living standards for all people in an unprecedented way. Equal human rights will bring the best possible values to all people. Everyone will be satisfied with their lives.

No economy can be more productive than the one where each job gets the best available worker. Public companies will become more productive than private ones so that capitalism will go down in history. Complete implementation of equal human rights should be called socialism. Socialism will be the final result of full employment. My book Humanism scientifically presents how to achieve this goal.

The Saudi Oil Attack: Geo-Political Theatrics

Hassanal Noor Rashid

THE OPENING SCENE

The 14th September 2019 attack which had caused significant damage to Saudi based Aramco Oil plants in Abqaiq and Khurais, was the trigger for much of the recent rise in regional tension  at least when it comes to Saudi- Iran relations.

However, given the way that recent events have unfolded, it seems that a commitment to a comprehensive and fair investigation is not exactly on the agenda.

If anything, there seems to be a more concerted effort in doubling down on a narrative that Iran is responsible for the attack despite the mind-boggling irrationality of why Iran would commit such an aggressive action where it stands to gain almost nothing from it.

Iran doesn’t need to worry about competing with Saudi Arabia over oil markets given the ridiculously draconian economic sanctions placed upon it by the U.S. To attack Saudi Arabia in such an open fashion would only result in loss of global political standing while risking retaliation and antagonism which opens up more avenues for potential conflict which Iran, given its historical experience dealing with the global hegemonic warmongering engine that is the U.S, does not want to risk entering.

In short from a geo-political strategic standpoint, Iran doesn’t benefit at all, from such a move.

So why would it commit such a bold and brazen attack?

MYSTERY AND MISDIRECTION

Nonetheless, various officials from the United States of America, almost without hesitation have jumped into a murky pool of unsubstantiated conjectures while hyping up the sensationalized fictional bogeyman of Iran. Their primary motivation is nothing more than their own antagonistic foreign policy stance and agenda against the Iranian state.

Even when Yemen’s Houthi rebels’ armed forces, claimed responsibility for the attack, as payback for Saudi Arabia’s continuous aggression towards the Yemeni people (which is completely backed and supported by the US government) their claim was dismissed with the argument that the 10 unmanned drone operation of 14th September was something far beyond the capabilities of the Yemeni people.  The attack, US officials and others alleged, was far more effective and too “neat” compared to previous attempts by the rebels and “likely originated from Iraq”.

It should also be mentioned that this attack is also a significant embarrassment for the Saudis and the U.S. as the Saudi government had spent a significant amount to purchase the U.S. air defence system which had failed to defend their oil installations

Analysis of the drone parts however, revealed some interesting factors, namely that the drone parts developed was beyond the technological capability of both Yemen and Iran. Historically speaking, Iran’s missile arsenal, while formidable in its own right, has long been plagued by poor reliability and guidance problems. This fact alone would debunk the Saudi narrative.  The logistical and technological assets are just not in the capabilities of the Iranians at this time.

The missiles on the other hand which were shown through pictures supplied by the Saudi Defence Ministry itself had indicated through the number MC 79050 a Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS). This particular missile type is one of many developed by the Counter Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP), all of which were confirmed by the Saudis to have been fired from the Iraq-Kuwait border. The missiles themselves were speculated to have been supplied from Ukraine. Some have even gone on to suggest that it may have been the work of rogue U.S. elements 

However with the Saudis bullishly pushing through this narrative, it becomes clearer, that the agenda here is to implicate Iran as the instigator, willfully ignoring the lack of evidence and the lack of plausible motive while simultaneously not giving credence to the plight faced by the Yemeni people.

Even when China’s own Xi Jinping, expressing concern over the issue as the attack had caused quite a stir within the International energy market, called for a comprehensive and just investigation into the incident — a fairly standard and sensible approach to calming the tensions between the Saudis and the Iranian state for the sake of international energy security — China was rewarded with new rounds of American sanctions against it for dealing with Iran on oil.

Considering all these factors, one begins to wonder about a few things.

Firstly why is there such an insistence that Iran be painted as the criminal in this story despite the poor foundation of the accusations?

Second, as we have shown, Iran does not stand to benefit from this event, which is why the question has to be asked: who benefits the most from this whole debacle?

The answers are found among the role-players themselves who are now in a situation that can only be called grand geo-political theatrics with the protagonists being the U.S. and its allies, Saudi Arabia the hapless victim, and Iran, the proverbial bad guy.

HEROES, VILLAINS AND VICTIMS

Saudi Arabia has called for retaliation against the Iranian state and has played its role as a victim of aggression. Saudi Arabia play-acting is what is perhaps best described as bad comedy and to many who have followed the issue, the irony is not lost. Since 2015, the Saudis have been massacring the civilian population of Yemen. According to data collected by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, 67 percent of all reported civilian casualties in Yemen have been caused by Saudi-led coalition air strikes making them the “most responsible for civilian deaths” in Yemen since 2015. The current death toll now exceeds over 90,000 with many more suffering from treatable diseases in the midst of crumbling social infrastructure due to the on-going hostilities by the Saudis.

The leading role of the hero will most likely be the U.S. and its allies who not only perpetuate the narrative against Iran but also, as we have noted, militarily support the brutal war against the Yemeni people, one of the poorest people on earth. Apart from supplying arms to the unpopular Yemeni government, the US is also helping to enforce a naval blockade. A recent article by Amnesty International observes that a laser guided bomb manufactured by US company Raytheon, was used in a Saudi-led attack which killed six Yemeni civilians, three of whom were children. In addition to this mess, the United Kingdom government has come out saying that it “unreservedly” apologised for authorising arms deals to Saudi Arabia in breach of a court ruling against the sale of weapons that could be used in the war in Yemen.

With the U.S. and the Saudi state fanning the flames, one should also ask: what would be their motive for perpetuating and escalating conflict in the region?

Some have laid the blame directly at the U.S. administration and President Donald Trump, accusing the president of going back on his election promise to end US involvement in military conflicts in West Asia.

But is that true?

Trump, despite many other failings, has shown considerable restraint by rejecting demands to launch major attacks on Iran. If his previous actions are any indication of what his stance on conflict escalation is, notably on wanting to draw down forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria (his decision to pull out of Syria resulted in the resignation of his then Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis), Trump is more inclined to avoid getting caught in another costly war.   He would rather strike a deal with his foe.

One simply has to recall during the previous Presidential Election Campaign when Trump adamantly labelled the entire Middle East Wars as “stupid” and given that he is aiming to contest for the U.S. Presidential election next year, it makes little to no sense to commit American lives to another senseless war.  It also goes without saying that should the US involve itself in a military operation against Iran, it will only expose its forces in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan Somalia and other places in the region to hostilities and possible Iranian guerrilla attacks.

So while it may be an admittedly contestable conjecture at this point, if we entertain the idea that this whole scenario was a false flag operation (something the U.S. has been historically known to do to attack sovereign foreign governments), it stands to reason it is not Trump’s administration that is directly coordinating these events in recent weeks and in fact there may be those within the U.S. government that seek to oppose the President on his own foreign policy stance.

The murky swamp that is the deep state of the U.S. largely controlled by the neocons, has always been the lever  of power within the U.S. administration and many in it have served to advance the Zionist project of the Israeli State. Exemplifying this is perhaps people like prolific warmonger John Bolton, who unlike Trump, seeks very much to enter into military conflict with Iran. He was quoted in 2017 by the Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, which is represented by members of the Iranian exile group, as saying that the Trump Administration should embrace their goal of “regime change” in Iran and that before 2019, they will “celebrate in Tehran”.

Lest we forget, it was John Bolton, who vigorously campaigned against Tehran, and he was the one who ultimately demolished the hard and long struggle for the Iran Nuclear deal, tearing it to pieces and causing further rifts between Iran and the U.S. and essentially damaging U.S. foreign policy for the Trump Administration.

Bolton succeeded to some extent but in early September 2019, he was asked by President Donald Trump to resign as the National Security Advisor, noting that he “strongly disagrees” with many of Bolton’s suggestions “as did others in the administration”.

Perhaps it is coincidental, but one cannot help but draw a connection between Bolton’s resignation, and the Saudi oil plant attack as it had occurred soon afterwards.

With all that was mentioned previously, it would seem that the U.S. and Donald Trump’s Administration would benefit very little from this event and may face more backlash from it. Why then does the U.S. insist on pushing this poorly structured narrative of Iran’s involvement in the September 14 attack?

Does Bolton and his neo-con friends in the deep state have anything to do with this attack, and if so why and what would they have to gain?

Perhaps at this stage we must look beyond the theatrical show being presented to us and have a peek behind the proverbial red curtain and follow the puppet strings that are being pulled.

HIDDEN HANDS BEHIND THE CURTAIN

President Donald Trump’s call for John Bolton’s resignation via twitter had sent some shockwaves within the bureaucracy of the U.S. Administration, especially with Trump now having gone through a total of three National Security Advisers, H.R. McMaster, Michael Flynn and now Bolton.

Bolton’s dismissal brings us back to the question of who stands to gain?

To encapsulate, there is no credible evidence to suggest Iranian involvement. The Trump Administration gains almost nothing from the attack. So who stands to benefit from it?

One suspect is the Saudi elite with its prolonged proxy war against the state of Iran, more commonly known as the Iran-Saudi proxy conflict. The Saudi elite sees itself as a regional power. It views Iran as a direct challenge to that ambition.  This conflict is primarily political and economic in practice, but there have been attempts to exacerbate religious tensions especially between the Sunni and Shia sects within the Muslim Ummah.  This has repercussions beyond West Asia. Its impact upon Malaysia is an example. Influential Saudi trained preachers continue to demonize and vilify Shia groups and religious practices. Though there is hardly an indigenous Shia community in Malaysia, this vilification obviously serves the larger Saudi agenda of marginalising Shias and Iran.

However if we do not wish to entertain the idea that Saudi Arabia is willing blow up its own oil infrastructure to begin a false flag  operation to justify military action against Iran, then we have to abandon “the  Saudis did it theory”. Besides, the attack as we have acknowledged was a sophisticated technological exercise beyond Saudi capabilities. Even a false flag operation would play into the hands of the local Shia population that inhabits that particular geographical area in Saudi Arabia and for that reason would undermine the interests of the Sunni helmed Saudi state.

This leaves us with one other country that fits the proverbial bill and perhaps stands to gain the most from the deliberate targeting of Iran. It is the Zionist state of Israel.

Israel’s link to the lobbyist movement in America, its relationship with the neo-cons and its close historical ties with the deep state are all embodied in its intimate tie with John Bolton.

The Israeli government, in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, had hoped that by working through Bolton, there would be a more vigorous US policy against Iran, especially as mentioned before, Bolton clearly had been campaigning for maximum pressure against Iran, with him calling for more sanctions and the cancellation of the Iran Nuclear Deal as soon as he became National Security Adviser in April 2018.

All for the state of Israel.

Upon John Bolton’s dismissal from the Trump government, there were definitely segments in the Israeli Administration that were left uneasy by his departure. As a case in point, Amos Yadlin, the head of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv stated that “There’s no doubt that there’s sadness in Jerusalem” as John Bolton had “greatly amplified the Prime Minister’s position [on the issue]. But even with Bolton, Washington’s Iran Policy wasn’t heading in a direction that Netanyahu wanted.” 

Much like how the attacks at the Saudi Oil Plant happened a few days after Bolton’s dismissal, it is also coincidental that the attack had occurred around the same time as Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to annex more Palestinian land, especially Palestine’s Jordan Valley.

The biggest fear for Israel, is that if the Trump Administration, suddenly favours détente with Iran, Israel may have to stand alone against Iran, something it has never had to do being backed by US   Administrations all along.

So perhaps this whole incident may have been a response to that. Escalation of military tensions, justifying military aggression towards Iran, will not benefit Saudi Arabia and the U.S. but it will benefit Israel’s agenda centring around its perpetual quest for continuous land annexation, expansion of  power and enhanced control over the region. The one country that seeks to counter this parasitic drive for power and control is Iran. Iran’s presence in the region balances Israel’s and the U.S’s . hegemonic expansionism and quest for total dominance. Because the Iranian people have suffered so much from decades old US sanctions and Israeli manipulations, they are determined to protect their sovereignty, independence and dignity at all costs.

Seen from this perspective, the Saudi oil attack may have been an Israeli ploy to draw the US and the Saudi government into a more serious conflict with Iran.  It is a misstep because the ploy has not worked. Both the US and the Saudis are very much aware of the dangers of a military conflict with Iran.

In fact, the whole 14th September episode reveals how complex the geopolitical game in West Asia is. We don’t know how the game will end. We only hope that the theatrics that we have witnessed so far will not culminate in a huge tragedy for the people of West Asia and indeed for the entire human family.

Google announces a new breakthrough for quantum computing

Bryan Dyne

Researchers at Google AI Quantum have announced a successful experiment in which for the first time a quantum computer has performed a task that ordinary computers based on integrated circuits are incapable of doing in a reasonable amount of time. This technical milestone paves the way for far-reaching advances in physics, chemistry, astronomy, materials science, machine learning and a host of other fields.

The results were produced using Google’s quantum computer, dubbed Sycamore. It is the product of a collaboration between 75 scientists led by Frank Arute at Google, NASA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and more than a dozen other facilities in Germany and the United States. They compared how fast their machine and the world’s most powerful supercomputer, Summit, could produce a random number from a specially designed circuit one million times.

The experiment was then repeated multiple times on increasingly complex algorithms until they could show that while a quantum computer generated a result, a classical computer could not. During their final experiment, Sycamore produced its one million random numbers in 200 seconds. Summit was estimated to need 10,000 years to perform the same calculations.

This exponential increase in computing speed is the first documented instance of so-called quantum supremacy. The term was popularized by John Preskill in 2011 to describe the set of problems that are shown to be intractable for even the best modern computers but that should be relatively straightforward for the quantum computers being developed, thus providing a measure to determine if a given quantum computer had in fact surpassed the computational ability of conventional electronics.

Quantum supremacy also defines certain engineering milestones. While quantum computers have always held the promise of being able to do exponentially more processes per second than conventional machines, they have proven exponentially more difficult to build and maintain. It was not at all clear that quantum computers would in practice ever surpass supercomputers. Nonetheless, Google’s research indicates that there is at least one case where quantum computers are supreme, and suggests that there are many others.

The end goal, however, is not just to produce random numbers. An off-the-shelf laptop can produce a million random numbers in seconds if the algorithms used to produce them are not purposefully made complicated, as were the test cases for Sycamore and Summit. Rather, quantum computers have in theory the capability of solving in minutes problems that even the best supercomputers would likely not solve in the lifespan of our solar system. Two of these include simulating the motion of atomic and subatomic particles and factoring integers of several hundred digits.

To solve them, one must go beyond familiar binary models of computation which are used in today’s personal computers, tablets and phones. These devices store and process information in their memory using distinct physical states, usually some sort of switch being turned off or on, and the data they contain is often described as a sequence of the symbols 0 and 1. One unit of information, a bit, consists of either a 0 or 1 and the number of bits, usually discussed as bytes (where one byte equals eight bits), is the measure of the size of a computer’s memory.

This method of storing and retrieving information takes a small but finite amount of time, an amount which is not noticeable for a single calculation yet can grow large very quickly. High-end modern laptops can perform tens of billions of operations per second while the Summit supercomputer is capable of 148 million billion operations per second. And yet, while Summit could multiply two 300-digit numbers almost instantaneously, it would take the supercomputer—using its most advanced algorithms—billions of years to factor the product. A quantum computer is hypothesized to be able to perform the same operation in minutes.

The original rationale for quantum computers was not to factor large numbers, a key part in certain types of encryption, but to directly simulate rather than approximate quantum mechanics. This field of physics, the study of the motion of matter at its smallest scales, is inherently probabilistic. The position and momentum of a particle are not, as in our everyday life, described as a pair of numbers but as two sets of well-defined probabilities. In the early 1980s, Soviet mathematician Yuri Manin and American physicists Paul Benioff and Richard Feynman realized that if a machine could be devised to perform operations using this property of matter, it would be able to calculate the motion of matter exactly as it occurs in nature.

Instead of switches, Manin, Benioff and Feynman proposed to store information in a fundamental particle such as a photon, the basic unit of light. The value of the “qubit” is stored within the inherent rotation of the photon, which is either positive or negative. The difference between a bit and a qubit, and this is key, is that a qubit initially has both the positive and negative values. Only when the photon interacts with some external particle or wave will it fall into a single state, and it will do so following the probabilistic laws of quantum mechanics. This is known as “state superposition.”

In addition to superposition, quantum computing also takes advantage of a second property of fundamental particles known as “entanglement.” It is possible to take two (or more) particles and force them to interact in such a way that even though separated, each particle acts as part of the same system. What results from this is the ability to act on a single entangled particle, which instantaneously acts on all others within the entangled system.

The combination of state superposition and entanglement is what make quantum computers so much more powerful than classical computers. A computer with 266 bits can store or process 266 pieces of information at a time. A quantum computer with 266 qubits can store or process 2^266 (10^80, a one followed by eighty zeros) pieces of information at a time, a number equivalent to the number of atoms in the observable universe.

Yet qubits are incredibly difficult to operate on. The particles that are storing information react with their surroundings, either nearby matter or the so-called vacuum of spacetime, which is not “nothing” but in fact a constant creation and annihilation of particles. This can cause unknown but definite interactions—called quantum decoherence—with one particle which translates to each other particle with which it is entangled, forcing researchers to reset the entire system. Each particle serving as a qubit must be isolated as much as possible from these unwanted connections, typically by physically isolating them and cooling their surroundings to temperatures close absolute zero.

While it is impossible to suppress all quantum decoherence, for that would involve stopping the motion of matter, an impossibility, a great deal of research from groups around the world has gone into eliminating most of the extraneous motion. This effort is what has allowed Arute’s team to successfully align and operate Sycamore, which consists of 53 working qubits, outperforming the world’s most powerful supercomputer, which consists of many trillions of bits.

This technology is expected to herald advances in a variety of fields. Quantum computers, when they are more capable of surpassing supercomputers in all problems, not just one, will be able to more quickly and accurately find exoplanets, determine the properties of new materials, study the outcome of chemical reactions, and produce more advanced forms of artificial intelligence. They are at the same time a striking confirmation of humanity’s ability to understand and master nature.

Quantum computers under capitalism, however, have the capacity for reinforcing oppression. Standard encryption schemes will be broken in minutes or seconds, giving nations or corporations the ability to spy on their rivals and the working class, as well as infiltrate, control and destroy the electronic systems of whole countries. Employees at their workplace can be tracked with even greater efficiency and forced to work longer and harder. Immigrants can be hunted down with facial recognition and other forms of tracking with increased ease. And the algorithms used by Google, Facebook and other tech companies in conjunction with the US military and intelligence agencies will have an unparalleled ability to censor the internet, particularly left-wing, anti-capitalist and socialist publications.

While Google’s Sycamore quantum computer is nowhere near capable of such feats, the social and political consequences of a private company or a capitalist government having control of such a machine must be understood. At the same time, this must galvanize struggle against capitalism and for the establishment of a society where such vast and fundamental advances can be changed from tools of violence and repression to instruments for securing a prosperous and fulfilling life for all people.

More evidence of cover-up of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan

Mike Head

Further examples are emerging of the official whitewash of illegal killings and other abuses committed by Australian Special Forces units as part of the US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Among the latest reports is one that soldiers shot dead at least five civilian protesters and injured six demonstrating outside an Australian base in 2010.

This evidence, the latest in a long series of damning disclosures, underscores why the Australian government is intensifying its efforts to suppress media freedom by threatening and prosecuting whistleblowers and journalists in order to prevent the exposure of war crimes and other abuses.

An Australian light armored vehicle in Afghanistan

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported this week that documents and video footage it had obtained from the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) showed that protesters were gunned down near Australia’s Forward Operating Base Mirwais in the Chora Valley on September 17, 2010.

The incident at the base, 20 kilometres northeast of the Uruzgan provincial capital Tarin Kot, typified both the hostility of most Afghans toward the occupying forces and the brutal character of the military occupation itself.

The ABC said a three-minute video showed hundreds of men and boys approaching the base, some carrying sticks and flags, before dozens of rocks were thrown at the roof of the base. Australian soldiers are heard shouting in alarm before reporting that smoke grenades would be used to disperse the crowd. The video ended before the soldiers began opening fire on the demonstrators.

The AIHRC files contradict official claims, issued shortly after the incident, that a soldier shot only one protester who had “aimed an AK-47” at troops. A Defence Department spokesperson this week still insisted it was a legitimate act of self-defence in response to “rioters.” He stated: “An investigation by the Commanding Officer into the incident found that Australian and Coalition soldiers acted appropriately and in accordance with their Rules of Engagement.”

The ABC reported that the latest material was among more than 90 investigation files it had obtained from the Uruzgan office of the AIHRC. Uruzgan was the operational area for Australia’s Special Operations Task Group, which consisted of about 320 commandos. The ABC has chosen not to release the material but instead reported only selected cases.

In one, a 2012 operation, Australian troops killed two villagers and left others maimed in Sarkhume, a small farming community. Residents complained to local authorities but an internal Australian investigation classified the victims as combatants and ruled that the raid was justified.

In a 2013 incident, Australian Special Air Service (SAS) forces entered a house in the village of Ala Balogh, on the fringes of Tarin Kot, and killed Bismillah Jan Acadi and his son Sadiqullah, 6, who were both sleeping and unarmed. This contradicted the findings of a military investigation that the man had pointed a gun at a SAS trooper.

These are only the most recent documents, leaked or obtained from official sources, disclosing illegal killings—including of captured detainees—torture, desecration of bodies and other war crimes committed by Australian units. By all indications, this is only the tip of an iceberg.

In 2017, the ABC published, also in a redacted form, what it called the “Afghan Files.” They covered at least 10 incidents between 2009 and 2013 in which military investigators summarily cleared Special Forces soldiers of killing civilians, including children, and other war crimes, such as severing the hands of dead alleged Taliban fighters.

The accumulating evidence points to systemic abuses, clearly authorised and shielded at the highest levels. This cannot be explained, as the corporate media has claimed, as the conduct of isolated “bad apples” or “poor culture” among the troops. These barbarities underscore the inherently criminal character of the wars of occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq to secure US control over the strategic and resource-rich Middle East and Central Asian region.

As a consequence, the military units involved treat the entire populations as the enemy. Moreover, their rules of engagement permit such killings, and military inquiries invariably find that soldiers acted within these rules.

The Special Forces have been the primary ground force in Australian military operations since the Vietnam War. That is precisely because they specialise in secretive targeted killings and assaults. They are also the frontline units that would be called out within Australia, with “shoot-to-kill” powers, to deal with “domestic violence”—civil unrest—under expanded military call-out legislation passed by parliament last year.

In August, the Liberal-National Coalition government announced extra funding of $3 billion over 20 years to upgrade their weapons and resources. Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted that the “wonderful” commandos had “an impeccable record” in “Afghanistan in particular.” He effectively pre-empted a long-delayed inquiry by Paul Brereton, a judge and Army Reserve major-general, who reportedly has interviewed more than 200 witnesses of the killings, torture and abuses.

This week’s revelations will fuel the widespread opposition to the mounting persecution of whistleblowers and journalists. An ex-military lawyer, David McBride, is currently in the first stages of a trial, behind closed doors in Canberra, for allegedly leaking information to journalists about the Afghan war crimes coverup.

An unprecedented police raid on the ABC’s Sydney headquarters in June seized documents related to the “Afghan Files,” acting on a warrant against reporter Dan Oakes, producer Sam Clark and director of news Gaven Morris. A day earlier, police spent hours ransacking the Canberra home of a News Corp political editor, Annika Smethurst for reporting on secretive government plans to expand the domestic surveillance powers of the intelligence agencies.

Despite public outrage, the government has refused to rule out prosecuting these journalists. This blatant attack on journalism is a warning of how far governments in Australia and globally will go to block the truth about war crimes and mass surveillance.

While the establishment media outlets this week launched a prominent “right to know” campaign against aspects of this assault on press freedom, none have come to the defence of Australian journalist and publisher Julian Assange. Yet, it was the arrest of the WikiLeaks founder in London on April 11 that gave the global green light for such repression.

Assange’s imprisonment was rapidly followed by the Trump administration’s application for his extradition to face jail for life, if not execution, on US Espionage Act charges. Assange’s only “crime” has been to expose the killings, regime-change operations and global spying committed by the US and its allies, including Australia.

As the WSWS has warned, these developments are directly related to covering up, not just the past crimes of the US and its allies, but preparing for even greater ones as social and political unrest grows and Washington escalates its economic war and military confrontation with China.

Euro area heads for slump as Draghi steps down as central bank chief

Nick Beams

The governing council of the European Central Bank (ECB), meeting in Frankfurt on Thursday, has reaffirmed its controversial decision in September to lower the base interest rate further into negative territory and resume its asset purchasing program to the tune of €20 billion a month.

The decision will further expand the ECB’s holdings of €2.6 trillion worth of financial assets. It sparked considerable criticism both from within the governing council, leading to the resignation of the German representative, and also from several European central bankers past and present.

Speaking at his final press conference before former International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde takes over next month, outgoing ECB president Mario Draghi noted the support for the policy shift at the governing council meeting, saying there was a “general call” for unity. But it is not clear whether the critics have shifted their position or whether they will resume their opposition when Lagarde takes the reins.

Addressing the decision at the press conference, Draghi said that “unfortunately” everything that had happened since the September meeting showed the need for the ECB to act in the way it had.

In his introductory remarks, he said: “Incoming data since the last governing council meeting in early September confirm our previous assessment of a protracted weakness in euro area growth dynamics, the persistence of prominent downside risks and muted inflation pressures.”

The slowdown in growth mainly reflected “the ongoing weakness of international trade in an environment of persistent global uncertainties, which continue to weigh on the euro area manufacturing sector and are dampening investment.”

In response to questions, he noted the ECB had been preparing to exit from its expansionary monetary policy in 2017 but conditions had changed since then and the central bank had to shift course.

Draghi was referring to the pronounced downward shift in global economic conditions over the past 18 months. In 2017 the world economy was experiencing an upturn, prompting the view that the world economy was finally recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and central banks could start to “normalise” monetary policy.

The “recovery” proved to be short-lived and by the middle of last year the global economy had entered what the IMF called at its meeting earlier this month a “synchronised” slowdown.

Draghi said the main take-out from the IMF meeting was what he called a shift in the “paradigm of reference.” Previously the view had been that interest rates were low and would remain low for some time but that they would go up.

Now the sense was that interest rates would stay low and remain there for a long time.

Commenting directly on the situation in the euro area, he said the latest purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for manufacturing—an indicator of future activity—was at its lowest level since 2012. The services sector had continued to hold up but now there were indications that PMIs in this area were starting to turn down.

Data released in advance of the ECB meeting pointed to the worsening economic outlook for Europe. Eurozone inflation fell to its lowest level in almost three years. Prices rose by only 0.8 percent in September from a year earlier, compared to 1 percent for August, and below estimates of a 0.9 percent rise.

The mandate of the ECB is that it should conduct monetary policy with the aim of maintaining inflation at close to 2 percent.

However, as one financial analyst commented to the Financial Times: “Almost every time Eurostat has published inflation data so far this year, the result has been disappointing for the ECB.”

France, at 1.1 percent, was the only country among the larger member states to record an inflation rate above 1 percent, while in Germany the inflation rate dropped from 2.2 percent a year ago to 0.9 percent.

The euro area is being heavily impacted by the slowdown in global trade. Figures released on Wednesday showed eurozone exports to the rest of the world fell in August by 2.2 percent compared to a year ago, while intra-eurozone exports were down by 5.5 percent. International trade was hit by the 5.7 percent fall in exports of machinery and transport equipment, reflecting the contraction of global investment.

Earlier this week, Germany’s central bank warned that the country’s economy may have contracted in the third quarter, following a decline of 0.1 percent in the June, putting it at risk of a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

The Bundesbank said while a recession “in the sense of a clear broad-based decline” with underutilised capacity “had not yet been apparent,” the export-oriented manufacturing industry “continued to weaken” in the third quarter. Car production was “greatly reduced” in July and August while production of intermediate and consumer goods “fell sharply.”

Other reports on the German and eurozone economy indicate the same trends.

A report from the survey firm IHS Markit said that, according to its composite index covering manufacturing and services, employment levels in Germany had contracted this month for the first time in six years.

Speaking on the overall situation in the eurozone, the firm’s chief business economist, Chris Williamson, said the composite index showed the eurozone economy grew by only 0.1 percent in the September quarter, down from the 0.2 percent in the second quarter and well below trend levels.

“The eurozone economy started the fourth quarter mired close to stagnation, with the flash PMI pointing to a quarterly GDP growth rate of just under 1 percent. The manufacturing downturn remains the fiercest since 2012 and continues to infect the service sector, where October saw the smallest increase in new work for almost five years,” he said.

Williamson said the labour market was being hit as firms retrenched amid signs of excess capacity and a continued decline in jobs growth. This would add to risks that the trade-led downturn could spread to the household sector and further dampen growth by the end of the year.

“The survey indicates that Mario Draghi’s tenure at the helm of the ECB ends on a note of near-stalled GDP, slower jobs growth, near-stagnant prices and growing pessimism about the outlook, piling pressure on Christine Lagarde to drive new solutions to the eurozone’s renewed malaise.”

Draghi, once described by New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman as arguably the “greatest central banker of modern times,” is leaving his presidency of the ECB hailed as the man who “saved the euro” with his pledge in 2012 to do “whatever it takes.” What that meant in practice was a massive bailout of the banks, paid for through austerity policies imposed on the European working class, above all in Greece, where living standards and social conditions were reduced to levels not seen since the 1930s.

As for the so-called “unconventional monetary policies” he espoused and implemented, together with other major central bankers, the record shows that they have failed to bring any real economic revival and only created the conditions for a renewed economic and financial crisis.

Lebanese protestors keep up demands for the government’s resignation

Jean Shaoul

Workers and students throughout Lebanon have kept up their protests—despite torrential rain—against Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government. The protests now span eight days, rejecting his so-called economic reforms and demanding the resignation of his entire government.

The protests erupted last week, bringing a quarter of the country’s six million people out onto the streets after the government sought to impose yet another tax aimed at making the country’s deeply impoverished working class pay for a deepening economic crisis—a $6-a-month tax on WhatsApp messages. Attempts to use the army and the police to break up protests only served to inflame popular anger and were largely abandoned.

Anti-government protesters in Beirut, Lebanon [Source: AP Photo/Hassan Ammar]

The mass protests were fuelled by deep-seated anger oversocial inequality that has soared since the end of the civil war in 1990. The richest one percent monopolize 58 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the poorest 50 percent own less than one percent, in a country that functions as a tax haven and playground for the region’s kleptocrats.

The protests have united workers and youth across the sectarian and national divide, with Palestinian and Syrian refugees, against whom the Lebanese ruling elite have long stirred up xenophobic tensions as a means of deflecting united class action, taking part. There are some 1.5 million Syrians who have fled the vicious US-driven proxy war engulfing their country, to whom Lebanon has refused to grant refugee or asylum status, as well as hundreds of thousands of longstanding Palestinian refugees who have very limited rights in the country.

Hariri, taken aback by the scale of the protests, backtracked. He abandoned the tax and, threatening to resign if they did not, forced his fractious coalition partners to agree a budget for 2020 that imposed no additional taxes on the working class.

While the budget makes token gestures such as halving current and former politicians’ salaries and benefits and requires the central bank and private banks to contribute $3.3 billion to a “near-zero deficit” for the 2020 budget, it opens up Lebanon’s economy to private investors, more privatisations and debt, all impacting adversely on living standards. With a national debt of $86 billion, recently reduced to junk-bond status by the credit ratings agencies, the government must satisfy onerous economic and fiscal conditions for accessing the $11 billion in loans pledged at last year’s international conference in support of Lebanon development and reforms (CEDRE) in Paris.

But Hariri’s budget only served to infuriate the masses on the streets, who dismissed his cynical measures against the politicians and the banks with contempt. Why, they asked, had such measures—and more—not been taken years ago?

Protestors demanded an end to the corruption that pervades every pore of economic and social life in the country, the resignation of the entire government and free and fair elections not based on the divisive sectarian framework of previous elections. They shouted slogans such as, “We are one people united against the state. We want it to fall” and “Revolution, revolution!”

Not one political party has been spared their wrath. In southern Lebanon, a predominantly Shi’ite region, protesters denounce both Nabil Berri, speaker of Lebanon’s parliament and head of the Hezbollah-allied Amal Movement, and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. While Hezbollah’s earlier support was based largely on its social welfare organisations that provided education and healthcare services, US sanctions on the group have limited its resources.

Despite the government’s call for schools and universities to re-open, they—along with the banks—have remained closed, bringing much of economic life to a standstill, with roads blocked by protestors and long lines of vehicles at the gas stations as fuel runs out. There are fears that when the banks do reopen, they will limit withdrawals.

On Thursday, television stations broadcast a poorly edited and pre-recorded statement by President Michel Aoun, who had remained silent throughout the crisis. He appealed to the masses with a pledge of support for the lifting of bank secrecy and politicians’ legal immunity from prosecution, declaring that those who had stolen public money would be held to account.

The public prosecutor announced that he has begun legal proceedings against the former billionaire prime minister Najib Mikati, his brother and son and Bank Audi on corruption charges. Aoun said, “I am ready to meet your representatives who carry your concerns, to listen to your specific demands.”

While he added that there was “a need to review the current government,” hinting at a reshuffle, he warned protesters that he would not tolerate continuing unrest. He said, “We will discuss what we can do together to achieve your objectives without causing collapse and chaos, open a constructive dialogue that can lead to a constructive result, and define options that will lead to the best results.”

Hariri’s coalition partners are the warlords and beneficiaries of the sectarian power-sharing system ushered in by the 1990 Taif Accords that ended the 15-year civil war and incorporated into the Lebanese Constitution the same year. He said that any reshuffle would be in line with the “constitutional mechanisms”—aka Lebanon’s sectarian political order from which the political dynasties, including the billionaire Hariri, benefit.

The major imperialist powers—the US, France and Britain—remained silent for days, before nervously urging Lebanon to heed the protestors’ “legitimate frustrations” and rein in corruption.

But President Aoun failed to impress the masses. “We have heard it all before,” and “We are here till the government falls,” they said.

Like its counterparts in Sudan and elsewhere, the protest has something of a carnival and nationalistic atmosphere. The overwhelmingly young and predominantly working-class demonstrators lack a clear and worked-out political perspective, articulating opposition to imperialism and all factions of the Lebanese bourgeoisie, leaving them at the mercy of those bourgeois forces that are organized.

The right-wing forces of the Christian parties, the Lebanese Forces Party, whose four cabinet members resigned from Hariri’s cabinet last weekend, the Free Patriotic Movement and the fascistic Kata’ib party, have taken part in the protests, calling for the cabinet’s resignation and early elections in the hope of better positioning themselves later. They will no doubt also encourage protesters into precipitous attacks on government property and security forces.

At the same time, numerous other groups, including professionals, are forming their own organisations to pursue their own agendas. There have been calls for a technocratic government to take over, while others have called for the army to take control if the protests and unrest continue.

The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers, regardless of their opposition to the Hariri government, offer no way forward for the workers and poor in Lebanon.

Lebanon’s struggle takes place amid a growing wave of working-class militancy throughout the Middle East and North Africa, exemplified by the strikes and demonstrations in Algeria, Sudan, Egypt and most recently, Iraq. It is to these forces and workers internationally that Lebanese workers must turn.

The only way to establish a democratic regime in Lebanon that satisfies the basic economic and social aspirations of the masses is through a struggle led by the working class, independently of and in opposition to the liberal and pseudo-left forces in the middle class, to take power, expropriating the regime’s ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class, uniting Arab, Jewish, Kurdish, Turkish and Iranian workers against capitalism and for the building of socialism.

Millions march for social equality across Chile

Eric London

Millions of people protesting social inequality and state violence poured into the streets across Chile yesterday in the largest demonstrations in the country’s history.

Stunned Chilean television commenters described the scene as a “human sea,” an “interminable column” and a “carnival of people,” though few were watching the reports because half the adult population of the country was already in the streets. Over one million people descended on Santiago’s Plaza Italia while protestors filled every city in the country.

People gather during an anti-government protest in Santiago, Chile (AP Photo Rodrigo/Abd)

With yesterday’s demonstrations, the floodtide of international working class struggle rose higher amid a week of explosive social protest. Across the world, workers and youth of all races are demonstrating with the same basic demand: social equality.

In Iraq, the government killed at least 30 people yesterday as protests swelled in Baghdad and in the industrial south. In the African nation of Guinea, one million people marched Thursday against an extension of the president’s term in office. Protests are ongoing in Lebanon, and Haiti while last week saw mass turnouts in Barcelona, Spain and Ecuador.

The working class stood at the head of yesterday’s protests in Chile, with overwhelming participation reported among teachers, miners, dockworkers and other critical sectors.

Truck drivers and taxi drivers blocked the country’s highways and toll roads yesterday and bus drivers walked off the job in Santiago after police murdered a protesting bus driver. Middle school, high school and university youth marched under their school banners across the country. A mile-long caravan of motorcyclists drove through Santiago. Hackers claimed to have published the personal information of every member of the hated Carabinero police.

The demonstrations were not called by any political party and Chilean reporters noted the absence of any party flags or banners in the crowds. The trade union bureaucracies had no visible presence. As El País worried earlier this week, “No political force with representation in congress has been able to channel the social unease.”

The massive turnout came hours after President Sebastían Piñera attempted to placate protestors by announcing an increase in pension fundings. Earlier this week, Piñera rescinded the hated hike of metro fees that initially sparked demonstrations.

As protests swelled, the federal legislature abandoned the congress building in Valparaiso in the afternoon while Piñera maintained a panicked silence. The head of the lower house declared, “This is a high risk situation. I have called for the suspension of legislative activities and I am assuming responsibility for getting everyone out of the building.”

The 20,000 police and military deployed to the streets in the ongoing state of emergency initially pulled back to guard critical government buildings, but began attacking protestors in front of the presidential palace La Moneda in mid-evening. Soon after, the military began deploying to enforce the curfew and were confronted in some locations by angry demonstrators.

Reports are emerging of horrific torture at the hands of the Chilean police and military. Yesterday, the Chilean National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) reported that police have arrested 5,500 people in more than a week of ongoing protest.

A legal complaint filed by the INDH shows that in a working class suburb of Santiago four people “were ‘crucified’ on a metal antenna at the police station, hanged by their handcuffs” and beaten. There are widespread reports of rape, sexual abuse and violent beatings. There are 19 dead and hundreds injured, 123 people by police and military gunshot alone.

The police and military are preparing for a massive crackdown. Yesterday, the military called up reservists from the country’s provinces to perform administrative duties that will facilitate the deployment of 15,000 more soldiers to the streets.

Just 46 years ago after the coup of September 11, 1973, the Chilean armed forces drowned the workers’ movement in blood, killing thousands and torturing thousands more. Thousands of children of murdered left-wing militants were adopted to overseas couples. Tens of thousands more were brutally beaten in prison.

The size of yesterday’s demonstration in Chile, in which many family members of Pinochet’s victims participated, shows the masses of working people want a reckoning with the historical crimes of the Chilean ruling class and military, for which no one has ever been held to account. Pinochet himself died in freedom after the British Labour Party twenty years ago blocked his extradition to Spain for prosecution.

The demonstrators’ chant—“This isn’t about 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years”—testifies to the desire on the part of millions to fight the whole political establishment responsible for papering over the crimes of the dictatorship, preserving the power of the Chilean military and maintaining capitalist rule in the so-called transition to democracy that began in the late 1980s.

To prevent another September 11, the working class must not allow itself to become trapped in another popular front, in which its independent class interests will be subordinated to a faction of the Chilean ruling class presenting itself as “left.” This strategy, advanced by murdered Chilean President Salvador Allende, his Socialist Party, the Stalinist Communist Party and supported by the Pabloite MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left), paved the way for the coup by suppressing the class struggle and advancing the lie that the military represented “the people in uniform.”

Today, those seeking to keep the working class upheaval within the confines of the capitalist system include the Broad Front and Stalinist Communist Party, both of which are calling for “new elections” and denounced the protests as “violent.”

The US-based Jacobin Magazine published a translated article by the Chilean pseudo-left Convergencia Social asserting that “a new social bloc that includes trade unions, student, feminist and environmental groupings have proposed a set of demands that is ‘transversal’ (non-sectoral) and extends across the whole nation.” This “social bloc” explicitly excludes the working class and calls for demands that will appeal to the “whole nation”—i.e., the capitalist class. The article includes no references to “socialism,” “capitalism,” “revolution” or the “working class.”

What is instead required is to unleash the immense power of the independent international working class. This struggle can be developed through the establishment of popular assemblies and workers’ committees in all the factories, mines and workplaces throughout the country, aimed at mobilizing the independent strength of the working class in a struggle against the world capitalist system.