By Rufus Tyler

"State of the environment and the Socialist versus the Capitalist response to It".

This article will discuss the extent of the problem by covering two main points:(a) Anthropogenic (man-made) climate change and its adverse effects and (b) the effect of global warming on crops and commodities, and how it affects the working class

It will then address both the capitalist response: the high-tech, and the market-driven solution as well as the Green movement's reaction before concluding with the Socialist stance on the issues

I'd like to focus mostly on climate change, as opposed to other topics like resource depletion and pollution. Climate change is, in itself, a vast, sprawling issue so I will do my best to cover some examples that are representative of the situation at hand - while keeping in mind that any article like this can only begin to scratch the surface of the problem. 

Humans have known about man-made climate change since the nineteenth century.  SVANTE ARRHENIUS (Ahr-renius) was a Swedish physicist. According to Wikipedia in 1896 "he was the first to use basic principles of PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY to calculate estimates of the extent to which increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide increase the Earth's surface temperature. These calculations led him to conclude that human-caused CO2 emissions, from fossil-fuel burning and other combustion processes, are large enough to cause global warming." Basically, he was the first person to work out, scientifically, that human activity would warm the planet through an increase in the GREENHOUSE EFFECT. 

Arrhenius (born 19th of  February 1859 – died 2nd of October 1927) was one of the founders of physical chemistry and was also the first Swedish Nobel laurate in 1905

According to NIWA, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research: The greenhouse effect is a natural process that warms the Earth's surface. When the Sun's energy reaches the Earth's atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases.  

Physical chemistry uses physics to learn about chemicals from levels that can be seen by the naked eye down to the smallest measurable particle.

Physical chemistry uses physics to study chemical systems. It studies them at macroscopic, atomic, subatomic, and particulate levels. It looks at concepts like motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical mechanics and dynamics. Physical chemistry is not the same as chemical physics. Physical chemistry is mostly a macroscopic or supra-molecular science. The majority of physical chemistry concepts relate to bulk properties rather than to molecular/atomic structure alone. 

Simply put, people have been aware of climate change for over a century. As much as some lobby groups would like to pretend otherwise, anthropogenic climate change is a fact. The effects of climate change include disruptive weather patterns worldwide, such as:

LONG TERM DROUGHT 

In Central America long-term drought has resulted in large-scale emigration.  While most of the American media is happy to portray the "Migrant Caravan" as some sort of bogeyman, few news stories mention that existing poverty and exploitation in Central America is being made worse by an ongoing drought. In ScienceDaily.com on March 14th, 2019  an article headed "Central American kidney disease epidemic linked to occupational heat exposure" stated that: 'For two decades, Nicaragua and El Salvador have seen increasing mortality from an unusual form of chronic kidney disease (CKD), also called Mesoamerican Nephropathy (MeN)Nephropathy means kidney disease or damage. The disease has disproportionately affected sugarcane and other agricultural workers, and appears to be unrelated to traditional kidney disease risk factors such as diabetes.' This marked increase in kidney disease is due to agricultural workers being exposed to higher temperatures. The drought has also made planting a risky business - peasant farmers often go into debt to buy seed and fertiliser. If the crop fails due to drought, the farmer will still be on the hook for the loan. This financial pressure pushes many to move to the cities or abroad - some of these people have joined the "Migrant Caravan". 

The South West United States has also experienced droughts and wildfires brought about by climate change.

"The Southwest is already experiencing the impacts of climate change. The region has heated up markedly in recent decades, and the period since 1950 has been hotter than any comparably long period in at least 600 years""The decade 2001-2010 was the warmest in the 110-year instrumental record, with temperatures almost 2°F higher than historic averages, with fewer cold air outbreaks and more heatwaves."(National Climate Assessment 2014) In the future, more flights will be grounded because of higher temperatures.  Sixty American Airlines regional flights, of between seventy and ninety passengers, were grounded. The following year, 2018, American Airlines changed its operating guidelines to accommodate higher temperatures. (azcentral.com)

These rising temperatures have forced commercial aircraft manufacturers to change their operations manuals to take into account these rising temperatures.

According to  "aviation.stackexchange.com" the Beechcraft King Air B200 commuter aircraft has the following limitation:

Max Outside Air Temperature Limitations

Sea Level to 25,000 FT pressure altitude: ISA (International Standard Atmosphere) + 37° C

These limitations are given in the AFM (AIRCRAFT TRAINING MANUAL), and compliance is required.

Practically speaking, this limits aircraft operation of any kind—including takeoff and landing. Takeoff would not be authorized at sea level above 52°C, or at 5000 ft pressure altitude above 42°C.' 

This means that the aircraft would not be safe for take-off above 52०C. The Indian heatwave this year has already recorded temperatures of 50०C.  'The thermometer hit 50.6०C in the Rajasthan desert city of Churu on Saturday, the weather department said.' (Phys.org) 

In Europe, Coldiretti, an Italian agriculture association, states that last season, the olive harvest fell 57 percent, a 25-year low. At this rate, the group said, the chance of losing (possibly forever) Italian extra virgin olive oil is very real and “will have disastrous effects on the economy, jobs, health, and the countryside.” David Granieri, chairman of Unaprol, Europe’s largest olive oil producers’ union, is citing the harsh weather associated with climate change as one of the primary culprits. Additionally, a pathogen spread via insects took down many of Italy’s olive trees in Puglia in 2018.(fodors.com)

The fall in olive oil production is also due to a pathogen, The Xylella fastidiosa pauca bacterium, which is 'spread by plant-sucking insects such as the meadow froghopper. The bacteria restricts the flow of sap within the tree and so chokes its extremities' (Wikipedia). I put it to you that the spread of the disease is helped by warmer temps. 

BBC News on June 30th, 2018, reported "lettuce growers in the UK warn there is an imminent shortage". The previous year on February 3rd, 2017, the same source said that bad weather in Europe been to blame for  "a shortage of broccoli, tomatoes, salad peppers and aubergines." as well as actual rationing of lettuces at supermarkets across the country that winter.

Last year Ireland suffered a fodder and silage shortage. On July 24th, 2018, "Independent.ie" stated: 'Hay and straw prices have almost doubled as livestock farmers warned it could take Ireland 18 months to recover from the miserable winter followed by the record-breaking summer drought.' 'Straw bales (4x4) are now fetching €30 each – a near doubling of the €17 price many farmers had shelled out for straw in 2017. It is estimated that straw yields are now back by around 40pc nationwide.'(yields are down by 40 percent)

Even Scandinavia has been affected by drought. According to "thelocal.se": "Swedish authorities warn of a repeat of last year's water shortage if the dry weather continues. And some areas already have a hosepipe ban in place. After a dry and hot summer, and not enough snow in the winter, groundwater levels are below normal in Sweden. The shortage affects both larger repositories, which provide water to those connected to the municipal water networks, and smaller ones from which those with their own well get water."(April 25th, 2019)

People normally associate Europe with being a green place so these sorts of prolonged spells of dry weather seem ominous to me. This is only the beginning: the new normal will be more arid. The threat of desertification looms large in Southern Europe. 

THE WEAKENING OF THE SUMMER MONSOON IN SOUTH ASIA:

Rainfall from the Asian summer monsoon has been decreasing over the past 80 years, a decline unprecedented in the last 448 years, according to a new study "Anthropogenic Aerosols Cause Recent Pronounced Weakening of Asian Summer Monsoon Relative to Last Four Centuries" (Yu Liu, Wenju Cai, Changfeng Sun, et allia, Huiming Song, Kim M. Cobb, Jianping Li, Steven W. Leavitt, Lixin Wu, Qiufang Cai, Ruoshi Liu, Benjamin Ng, Paolo Cherubini, Ulf Büntgen, Yi Song, Guojian Wang, Ying Lei, Libin Yan, Qiang Li, Yongyong Ma, Congxi Fang, Junyan Sun, Xuxiang Li, Deliang Chen, Hans W. Linderholm)

The study basically says that greenhouse gases increase temperatures but man-made aerosols reflect sunlight providing a localised cooling effect.  This effect is the opposite of what would be expected. Cooler air carries less water vapour than hotter air, causing less rainfall. About half of the world's population depends on the South Asian Summer monsoon for water - in most of India, it provides about eighty percent of the year's average precipitation. The monsoon can happen anytime between June through September. In the northwest, it can last for fifty days before withdrawing (Wikipedia). It looks like human activity is delaying and weakening the monsoon.

FOREST FIRES 

Forest fires in recent years have a more intense, longer fire season. Fires are spreading to hitherto unaffected areas. CBC.ca explains that 'We have to learn to live with fire'

2.5 million hectares of land is charred every year. Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at the University of Alberta, predicts that will double. 'Canada is, on average, experiencing warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, according to Canada's Changing Climate Report.

The study, commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada and released last month, found that Canada's annual average temperature over land has warmed 1.7 C since 1948 — with higher rates seen in the North, the Prairies and northern B.C.''These parts of the country have been some of the hardest hit by wildfires in recent years, Flannigan points out, and that may signal a trend toward longer and more destructive seasons in these areas as a result of climate change.' CBC Radio · Posted: May 20, 2019 

So those were some examples of the negative impact of climate change but who are the people who are being impacted by climate change?

It is clear that the effects of climate change disproportionately affect the poor and working class. The drought in Central America has displaced peasants. Hotter average temperatures have destroyed some coffee plantations - bringing with it a fall in income for peasant farmers. In the future, coffee shortages could make it a luxury item, priced out of range for most consumers. The same fate could befall chocolate.

The end result would be that average, everyday people in western countries would have to stop consuming these things. The farmers who used to grow it would fare even worse: their livelihood is gone and they have no option but to migrate. As migrants they face discrimination and hardship - searching for a better life could get them killed - by criminal elements, by hazards like falling off a moving train, or they could even end up dying in custody.

I'd like to mention Mesoamerican Nephropathy again - this is a relatively new disease that's being made worse by climate change.

Rich people are unaffected - they will simply pay higher prices for the commodity. The price increase may even be a boon to them - more expensive means more prestige in their eyes, plus the right investments could mean a healthier portfolio.

Global warming also contributes to sea-level rise. Again, the rich can either build seawalls or they can pack up and move. Only the poor are forced to deal with the problem where they live.

Earlier this year, the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation predicted that the grain harvest will be thirty million tonnes short of demand. They said that they don't expect any rise in prices because current stocks should be enough to cover the shortfall. It's important to remember that the "Arab Spring" of 2011 was kicked off by a rise in the price of wheat.

The drought in Europe is putting farmers under pressure - it's mostly the smaller producers that suffer - large multinationals have the resources to weather the storm. Another possible outcome is that things like olive oil may become too expensive for the average consumer.

If the monsoon fails, the consequences will be devastating. India produces most of its own food at the local level (something like ninety percent). These farmers would have no crops if the monsoon fails, city dwellers would have no food. The farmers are already some of the poorest people in India, if their livelihood is taken away by the lack of rain; they will have nowhere to turn. What these folks would do in such an event is anybody's guess.    

Forest fires affect the poor more than the rich -  the rich can hire their own private firefighters, they can move to another property, they are insured. Another thing that will get worse over time is respiratory disease. It is mostly working-class people that will be affected - people who work outside are most at risk. The rich, as always, have other options: they can stay inside with their air-purifiers or they can go on holiday until the worst of the smog is over. Another thing is, low-income neighbourhoods are affected the most by air pollution from industry and traffic. 

So what is society's response to this crisis?

Some turn to technology. They believe in unproven technologies like Carbon Capture or geo-engineering. Seeding the atmosphere with sulfates (Sulfates occur as microscopic particles (aerosols) resulting from fossil fuel and biomass combustion. They increase the acidity of the atmosphere and form acid rain. ) could provide a cooling effect, but it would cost over a billion dollars a year, every year. There are unknown side-effects: if it rains in one place, that may take the rain away from some other place. Using sulfates could change the colour of the sky from blue to something more whitish.

Carbon Capture is an industrial process that plucks carbon (in the form of CO2) from the atmosphere and turns it into a liquid, which is then injected deep into the earth. It is very energy-intensive. There's no proof that once stored the carbon will stay there - it may well leak out. Another thing is that this process does not scale well - it works in small quantities but it is expensive and for it to work we would need to build enough facilities to offset the emissions from more than a century's worth of carbon. Picture every oil well, every fossil fuel power plant, but working in reverse. It is a building project of an unprecedented scale, there's no political will to do it because there's no profit in it.

One more thing that carbon capture has going against it is that capitalists are already planning to re-use the captured carbon - some research has been done looking into using the carbon as a fuel source. If we capture the carbon and then re-use it, we will be right back where we are at the moment.

So, as far as I can see, the technological solution to the environmental problem is a sham - mere window dressing that will allow the ruling class to keep on doing "Business as Usual". It is greenwashing that will permit them to continue fleecing the workers as the world burns.

Greenwashing is defined by oxforddictionaries.com as "Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image."

Capitalism has also come up with Carbon Credits (more on that later) - they remind me of the derivatives responsible for the 2008 global recession. That is they don't seem to be reality-based; it's a solution on paper only.

It looks like capitalism has reduced the greatest crisis ever faced by mankind into an externality.

Externalities

The damage to the environment is nothing more than an externality to the bourgeois. An externality is anything that has a cost that isn't borne by the capitalist- that is, say anything bad or detrimental that the capitalist doesn't have to pay for. Externalities are things like:

• pollution, for example: of the water supply, air; it includes indirect results of pollution like the increased incidence of lung and respiratory disease and the concomitant shortening of the average lifespans of affected groups.
• environmental damage or deterioration, for example, deforestation, open cast mining and its tailings; this includes more intangible things like “What is the cost of decreased biodiversity? What are the ethical considerations of changing the look of the landscape? Should the current generation be allowed to make irreversible decisions for generations yet to come?” All these questions have a cost.
• the dispossession of the proletariat, peasant or indigenous groups example: logging or mining companies destroying the livelihood of indigenous tribes when they cut down the forest. In the Amazon, before roads are built, the negative human impact on the forest is limited to areas near navigable rivers - mostly some logging and mining operations. Once road construction opens up an area to commercial interests, logging intensifies to clear-cutting.  Finally, the ranchers move in to complete the process: the forest has no chance of regenerating and the people who lived there have nowhere to go.

Other things like a company making employees buy their own uniforms instead of providing them would be a way of turning a business expense into an externality. Capitalism reduces the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced to a mere externality: something someone else has to pay for or fix.

Working within the existing power structures is not the answer. For example the Green Party tries to fix the problems that capitalism has brought about by turning to capitalism for the solution. The result is weak and ineffectual: things like Carbon Credits end up benefiting companies by allotting them a share of pollution they then are allowed to either emit or trade for a profit. Recent campaigns here in New Zealand for getting rid of plastic bags at the supermarket, or getting rid of plastic straws, have been nothing but greenwashing and a distraction; these campaigns shift the burden from capitalists and their companies to the individual. The individual is powerless to stop what is a societal problem.

In short, the bourgeois state's parliamentary democracy, with its careerists and compromised ethics, has no means to solve the problem. There is no political will because there is no private profit in changing anything. 

As we can clearly see the Capitalist response has not only helped create climate change but it hasn’t adequately addressed the issue.  So what is the appropriate Socialist response?  In Defence of Marxism provides us with an insight into this issue.

Kevin Harriman & Kevin Nance said that:

"Our ideas are a reflection of material reality, not the other way around. Therefore, to truly effect a fundamental change, we must change the material conditions and structures of society, not merely change our ideas."

And that is the key difference between their approach and our approach. Our way requires deep, fundamental change to the way things are run now - real, physical action that will manifest itself physically in an improved environmental outlook - grandiose talk and profiteering will change nothing.

In "Global Warming: a Marxist perspective" (July 6th, 2012) Chris Burrows wrote:

"...global warming is not just a scientific issue, but a class issue.

The impacts of global warming fall disproportionately on the poor. The effects will manifest themselves in lots of ways: more expensive foods, a shortage of water, less fertile soil, and more extreme weather. Those who will suffer (and already are suffering) as a result are ordinary working and middle-class people, peasant farmers – in short, everyone except the super-rich, who can always up sticks and move to a more pleasant climate. 

The dialectical nature of climate change is a striking confirmation of the philosophy of dialectical materialism developed by the founders of scientific socialism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In his unfinished book The Dialectics of Nature, Engels provides us with an explanation of dialectical materialism: "the transformation of quantity and quality - mutual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes - development through contradiction or negation of the negation."

The jetstream's all out of whack because of climate change. The differential between hot tropical air and cool arctic air is lessening and that is causing the jetstream to meander across the globe, bringing with it cold snaps like the "Polar Vortex" and the "Beast From The East".

In conclusion, we can draw the conclusions that climate change affects those least responsible for it the most.  Capitalism can only provide facile answers. And, the only effective response to this problem will be a concerted societal effort to end the profit motive, and to move towards a needs-based system. In short, Socialism is the only way to address the challenges posed by global climate change.

By Rufus Tyler

Portugal is a small country in Southwestern Europe of about 10.8 million people (2017 estimate) the median age is 42.2. It's about a third the size of New Zealand. It borders Spain and the Atlantic Ocean. Since joining the then European Community in 1986 the economy has become increasingly service-oriented. Over that time neoliberalism has unleashed a series of reforms like privatisation that have resulted in increasingly precarious working conditions. In 2011 it received a rescue package from the IMF bringing Austerity measures that pushed emigration to levels not seen since the 1960s.

Guinea-Bissau (formerly Portuguese Guinea) is a small country in West Africa. It borders Senegal, Guinea-Conakry and the Atlantic. It is slightly bigger than an 8th the size of New Zealand. 1.8 million people live there(July 2017 estimate). The median age is 20.1 years. Narco-trafficking is probably the most profitable industry, officially cashew nuts are the main export. It is largely agrarian. “Cashew sector performance helps to determine the overall macroeconomic situation of the country and food security status of rural areas. In 2013 cashew production and exports were disrupted as a result of the March 2012 coup. Guinea-Bissau is heavily reliant on foreign aid, which has not recovered to pre-coup levels”. (CIA World Factbook 2015) There have been five Prime Ministers since August 2015.

Angola is located in Southern Africa, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, the DRC, the Republic of the Congo, Namibia and Zambia. It is over four and a half times the size of New Zealand. 29.3 million people live there (July 2017 estimate). The median age is 15.9 years. Angola's Cabinda province is an exclave, separated from the rest of the country by a narrow strip of land 37 kilometres wide that gives the DRC access to the sea. Cabinda is oil-rich, in the past foreign-backed insurgents have tried to break away. Cabinda is responsible for half of Angola's oil production, the second most important in Africa(after Nigeria).

Cabinda Province is in Central Africa. It is roughly two and a half percent the size of New Zealand (7,270 Sq Km) with approximately 600,000 people living there. Most of the population speak French. Cabinda was fully integrated into Portuguese Angola in the 1920s. During the colonial wars two different, local rebel groups operated there, they eventually merged and called themselves the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda. Following the Carnation Revolution, the FLEC declared an independent republic, this prompted the Angolan Armed Forces to invade. There was a protracted, low-intensity war until a 2006 ceasefire. Splinter groups carried out attacks until 2010.  The CIA has been the main sponsor of separatists here. 

Mozambique (formerly Portuguese East Africa) is in Southeastern Africa, it is on the Mozambique Channel (on the Indian Ocean) which separates Africa from Madagascar. It borders Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Swaziland. It is almost three times the size of New Zealand. 26.6 million people live there (July 2017 estimate), the median age is 17.2 years. Almost half the population lives below the poverty line, most of the workforce is engaged in subsistence agriculture. There is some aluminium and hydroelectric production but most of the country doesn't have access to electricity. There is some natural gas extraction, which the government plans to increase dramatically by 2022 - projecting several billion dollars in revenue. Mozambique is a major conduit for the narco trade, getting drugs from Asia and South America which are then shipped to Europe and South Africa.

African Troops in the Portuguese Colonial Army, 1961-1974:Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique

(João Paulo Borges Coelho Eduardo Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique):

It is almost a truism to say that the colonisation of the African continent would have been impossible without local collaboration. The stereotyped picture of immensely superior European forces defeating small, fragile and unarticulated African resistances rarely corresponds to the historical truth. Much closer to reality is the picture of European officials able to foster and manage internal contradictions, attracting African forces into their orbit to make them fight other African forces in order to install and preserve the colonial order. In the two world wars of the last century, African troops fought in defence of the colonial powers’ interests both in the African theatre and elsewhere. Particularly after the 1950s, when nationalist movements began to fight for their independence throughout the African continent, African participation in the struggle to preserve the old colonial order acquired considerable importance. Local collaboration was fundamental to guaranteeing the colonial project. Portugal was not an exception in this respect, and often resorted to the recruitment of Africans in her war effort, namely since the so-called“Pacification Campaigns” in the late nineteenth century *

Portugal was the first European country to venture into Africa, their explorers opened up the way for others. Portuguese explorers were the first to round West Africa and the first to round the Cape of Good Hope. The first steps towards the colonisation of Africa were undertaken by Portugal in the 1400s, this was framed at the time as part of the Reconquista effort.

(In 711 an army from North Africa invaded and occupied most of Spain and all of Portugal. This established Muslim rule over the area, first as part of the Caliphate, then later as small independent kingdoms[Taifas]. The Reconquista was the centuries-long conflict between these Muslim rulers and Christian rulers – with peasants of both religions trapped in the middle like pawns. Vast swathes of the frontier were depopulated as the land changed hands three or more times, each time the victorious army would rape and pillage in an orgy of violence. The Caliphate of Cordoba's heyday around the year 1000 marked the high point of Muslim rule in Iberia. By the year 1200 Muslim influence was fast decreasing. The Kingdom of Granada was the last holdout, it was invaded and annexed by the Castillian crown in 1492. The Reconquista was a holy war – like crusaders of the time, participants were forgiven their sins.

Urban II, Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095, according to Fulcher of Chartres: "All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.” https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/urban2-fulcher.asp )

Portugal carried this crusading spirit to Africa.(....'Prince Henry had the temperament of a Crusader and a missionary. Of him, fully as much as of Columbus, it may be said that if he aimed at empire, it was for the extension of Christendom. Azurara's three final reasons for Henry's explorations all turn upon this. The Prince desired to find out the full strength of the Moors in Africa, "said to be very much greater than commonly supposed," "because every wise man" desires "a knowledge of the power of his enemy." He also "sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian princes" who would aid him against the enemies of the faith. And, lastly, he desired to "make increase in the faith of Jesus Christ, and to bring to Him all the souls that should be saved." ' The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea Vol. II  Gomes Eannes de Azurara[1899])

 “Factories” and forts were set up on the coast as service stops on the way to India. These forts would go on to become the nucleus of the Portuguese colonies in Africa. They were a source of gold, and more importantly, a source of slaves for Brazil. Because of superior boat-building techniques (the most advanced in late 1400s Europe) Portuguese authority was strongest on the coast, only traders went into the interior. Before the Berlin Conference (1885) control over a colony usually amounted to keeping trade routes open.

The Portuguese crown achieved this through a three-tiered system. The first line troops were a small regular army, mostly recruited from “assimilated” locals. They remained near the coast. The second line was made up of the personal armies of loyal chiefs. A local militia was the third line. From the earliest days, Portugal relied on local soldiers. Towards the end of the Wars of Liberation over half the men fighting for Portugal were locals. This caused a problem after independence – in Guinea over 7500 former Portuguese soldiers were killed.

Although Portugal was an imperial power, it was also a semi-colony of England. From the early seventeen-hundreds onward Britain propped up the decaying Portuguese Empire in exchange for favourable trading rights and international support against its enemies, France and Spain. The ruling classes became entwined with and indebted to British financial capital.

This meant that Portugal ended up being the most backward country in Western Europe, its colonies were even less developed. Guinea-Bissau was the least advanced part of the empire. Lack of investment plus scarce arable land added up to tough conditions for peasants; between 1941 and 1948 50,000 people died of starvation. In 1960 there were only 14 native university graduates, one of these was Amilcar Cabral. Cabral was born in 1924 to a schoolteacher and a shopkeeper. Cabral studied agronomy in Lisbon where he was exposed to Marxism as interpreted by Stalinist sects of the time – like the French communist party of the time, they did not support the self-determination of the colonies. He became a key leader in the struggle for independence.

After he returned to Guinea in 1951, he began to organise. Like many others, he became disillusioned with the first round of decolonisation when foreign administrators were replaced by pro-imperialist governments. It showed that formal independence was not true emancipation. This sentiment pushed the existing independence movement to the left. Cabral was part of a small group of petty-bourgeois who had been exposed to radical ideas while studying. Many of them were part of the lower-paid levels of the civil service and were receptive to revolutionary ideas. In 1956 Cabral and his brother, Luis, set up the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC). At first, it tried to pressure Lisbon with mass protests with some success.

The Portuguese administration increased repression in response to later protests instead of granting more concessions. One strike by dockers was met by the massacre of 50 port workers. This event in particular changed Cabral's outlook. The PAIGC took up arms and began an armed struggle for independence.

Guinea was a mostly rural country, with a very small proletariat, this meant that it was necessary to involve the peasants in the struggle. The PAIGC set up administrative divisions in the countryside and then went about taking over those areas by taking on governmental roles like providing public services and collecting taxes. It was able to rule effectively over most of the country because it was welcomed to some extent by the population. The party built roads and schools in neglected parts of the country. Cabral once said that the PAIGC itself had had to create the Guinean proletariat. The party had raised class consciousness and encouraged the growth of the working class by investing in infrastructure - creating more jobs and workers.

Guinea's terrain is mostly low-lying and swampy, crisscrossed by many waterways, there was a lot of forest cover. The location was well-suited to guerrilla warfare featuring ambushes, hit and run tactics and strikes behind enemy lines. The metropolitan army was at a disadvantage because of a lack of local intel and its reliance on fixed positions. Portugal's mostly recruit army had a desertion problem. By contrast, the PAICG was well motivated. Captured Portuguese soldiers were well treated, given medical treatment and instructed in how the class struggle related to them. This sympathetic handling by the nationalists inspired former POWs to quit fighting and tell their fellow soldiers about it. In Guinea the PAICG never targeted civilians

Portugal suffered from a manpower shortage because it was a source of labour for Western Europe and a source of migrants to the Americas – this had a dramatic effect on an already small country. These factors were a big part of why the Portuguese implemented the Africanisation policy. Other important considerations were reducing politically sensitive casualties and financing the war effort. The policy was implemented in different ways in different locations: in Guinea, the newly raised troops were almost a copy of the metropolitan army( the local commanding general probably wanted a Lusophone federation post-independence). In Angola the troops were more irregular, mirroring the rebels' tactics. In Mozambique, there was a combination of both strategies. The differences were caused not just by the variations of local conditions and terrain, but also by the commanding officer's outlook.  

In Southern Africa, the Portuguese used San (bushmen) people, first as scouts and later as regulars, against the majority Bantu population. In Eastern Angola, they received a group of Congolese gendarmes as refugees in 1967, by 1969 they had been organised into an anti-Mobutu force - the Front for National Liberation of Congo. They were supported by the Portuguese government with training, supplies and political supervision in exchange for participating in the “Overseas War” (project Fidelidade “Fidelity”). Despite ill-discipline – featuring frequent rioting and widespread desertions – they were some of the most effective anti-insurgency troops in that theatre. In Southern Angola, dissident Zambian ANC members were used in a similar way (Operation Colt) from 1968 onwards. Angola saw the wholesale use of irregular troops, unprecedented anywhere else in the Portuguese empire, because of a number of reasons: it was a larger theatre of operations, the Portuguese had trouble replacing soldiers whose tour of duty had finished, there were financial considerations, and the independence movement had split into three factions. These factions spent as much time fighting each other as they did the Portuguese. Deserters from these groups often joined the colonial forces, there were a lot of turned guerrillas in Angola. The local commanding general, Costa Gomes, had a good relationship with the secret police (the PIDE - International and State Defense Police) that allowed him to shift the burden to African troops, unlike other generals. The colonial authorities also wanted to put pressure on Zambia and Congo.

In Guinea local militias (who were Portuguese) were in charge of the security of the population, freeing up the expeditionary force for offensive operations. General Spinola tried to organise his African soldiers along the same lines as the metropolitan army. He recruited elite “special militias” from existing militias but could not raise as many men as he wanted because higher-ups in Europe were concerned about having so many trained, armed people in the country. To tie his hands the funding for the militias was centralised – beyond the general's control.

By contrast, Mozambique was late to the party. There was a combination of methods used, some had parallels in the other theatres, but some were unique to Mozambique such as the collaboration between colonial and Rhodesian authorities to form units of African scouts. In Mozambique, the Portuguese Armed Forces (PAF) were responsible for many atrocities. Their strategy consisted of denying aid and supplies to the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), tactics included torture, massacres and forced relocation. Between 750,000 and a million people were forced to move into fortified camps. Between 6 and 8 percent of them died due to bad conditions including disease and starvation. Portuguese settlers felt that the PAF were ineffective and disorganised and turned to mercenaries for security. As their hopes for a Portuguese victory dwindled, they set out to forge an alliance with the African elite; both parties had a lot to lose in case of a FRELIMO victory.

The use of different tactics in different countries showed that beyond broad strategic outlines the most important factors were local conditions and local commanders. Costa Gomes, in Angola, was the most successful, he tried to win over the civilian population, and used African troops in a counter-insurgency role. General Spinola in Guinea used his local troops in a “more political and psycho-social” fashion. General Kaúlza (Mozambique), the most conservative of the three, feared using irregular African troops who were outside his strict command.

Whatever their own, personal views were, by the end of the Liberation Wars, it was accepted that Africanisation was the only way to sustain Portugal's imperial project. According to the Chief-of-Staff African troops were more useful as far as cost and military efficiency went, as well as being more politically convenient. He thought that if they operated out of fortified villages they could go on fighting forever. He proposed reducing the number of metropolitan troops and freeing up the rules concerning the funding for local troops – the rules that had prevented Costa Gomes from raising as many soldiers as he wanted. In real world terms the Chief-of-Staff was setting up the conditions for civil war after independence. 

The Portuguese High Command was determined to hold on to its remaining colonies. An increasingly larger share of GDP was being devoted to the military. It had a marked effect on a small, under-developed economy – it meant ever-worsening conditions for workers. The armed forces had low morale and suffered from a desertion problem. Many young men who were eligible chose to migrate or to become guest workers instead of waiting to be conscripted. On April 25th 1974 things came to a head. A group of junior army officers overthrew the government. The “Estado Novo'' regime had been in power since 1933 when it was set up by dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. It was the longest-lived extreme right-wing administration in Europe.

Tanks rolled through Lisbon and conservative news sources feared it was only the beginning of an overthrow of capitalism. Caetano, Salazar's successor, urged general Spinola to take power, “or hand it over to the mob”. Caetano's overthrow emboldened the workers: the ruling class was no longer able to use the existing institutions to defend itself. 

The new government began talks with nationalist African rebels immediately, the military and most settlers pulled out within a year. Capital flight and brain drain followed and that helped to destabilise the new republics.

Workers' Councils were set up, a wave of strikes and occupations coursed through Portugal. Revolutionary fervour spread to the armed forces. The working class was primed to take over, what was missing was a revolutionary party with a clear program – the Socialist Party leader, Mario Soares, said he favoured a “A front of national unity, an alliance of many forces. And so you will see conservatives, Catholics, liberals, Socialists, and Communists all working together in the new civilian administration. ” Even “moderate” fascists were included. The socialist party was out of touch with the masses, it was “a shell of a party comprised of a handful of lawyers”. Even so, it grew rapidly during this period, becoming a genuine force. 'The CP leader Cunhal took not a Bolshevik, but a Menshevik position, "We need a union of all political movements to strengthen democracy in Portugal. United we shall crush the last of fascism and create a free democratic society.”' The socialists and the communists both rushed into a coalition led by Spinola. They believed that Socialism was only possible in the “far, distant future”

The government lasted four months – the Prime Minister and four minister-capitalists resigned. Soares described it as a “counter-coup”. The right-wing demanded that the socialists and communists be kicked out of the ruling coalition. The Bonapartist Spinola knew that he needed the SP and the CP to keep the masses pacified. Spinola promised liberty to the workers while at the same time telling the bosses that 'he would crush all “abuses of liberty”' The SP and the CP joined in condemning these “abuses” - occupations and strikes – as “far-left adventurism'. The workers rejected this line, the result was that both parties were forced further to the left. The SP became a Marxist party, unburdened by links to the Russian revolution, it ended up taking a position far to the left of the CP. Despite discussing nationalisation at their conference, all their talk amounted to nothing. It gave the reactionaries time to regroup, Spinola attempted a coup but his troops were won over to the workers' side. Bank workers occupied the banks and demanded their nationalisation – the banks were nationalised in one week. Eventually, thanks to the actions of the workers, three-quarters of the economy were nationalised. (The banks were intricately linked with other sectors of the economy)

This wasn't enough, what was needed was Workers' Democracy. Without it, it was only a matter of time before the reactionaries rallied. After surviving the March 1975 counter-coup, the Communist Party saw a chance to consolidate its position in local councils and trade unions. The Armed forces Movement also shifted to the left. Instead of demanding elected officers, the arming of the working class and the like, the CP looked to the radicalised officers to make an alliance, hoping to set themselves up in a privileged position in a new bureaucratic regime.

In the end, the Carnation Revolution was derailed by reformist and Stalinist leaders. The revolution came to an end in April 1976, when elections delivered a minority Socialist government. They entered a coalition with a right-wing party. This marked the Socialist party's sharp turn to the right, starting on the economic track that Portugal follows to this day.       

In Angola the war for independence had been contested between the Portuguese and three insurgent factions. The war continued after independence, it was fought as a proxy war, a part of the larger Cold War of the time. The main faction was the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the USSR and the Cubans. The Americans backed Holden Roberto and his Front for the National Liberation of Angola (F.N.L.A.). Jonas Savimbi lead the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). He was trained in China in waging a “People's War”, he got support wherever he could, some limited aid from China, a few mercenaries paid for by blood diamonds. After becoming disillusioned with Maoism he became an ardent anti-communist, he turned to apartheid South Africa for support.( I think Maoists are quite naive, they get all fired up expecting to shoot the government to death, when regular people ignore them and don't take up arms, they lose heart. The government has far more firepower, plus air support and extensive intelligence/surveillance networks as well, the armed struggle is a dead end. In Latin America Che's adventurism achieved nothing but the early death of many promising young comrades and increased repression – much harsher than it would have been otherwise. Military adventurism gave the ruling class an excuse for murdering and disappearing regular people like union reps and schoolteachers, it allowed them to murder indiscriminately without repercussions because the insurgency gave them cover in the international press for all those deaths )

The civil war in Angola continued for twenty-five years, by the late eighties Cuba had committed 50,000 soldiers. It was the USSR's last interventionist hurrah. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of minority rule in South Africa, the war in Angola lost its international relevance. Around this time the American backed rebels (FNLA) dropped out of the conflict. The war ended in 2002 when Savimbi was killed in an armed confrontation with government (MPLA) troops. Despite the vast mineral wealth and income from oil royalties, the country still hasn't recovered.

Two years after FRELIMO assumed power in Mozambique a civil war broke out. The Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) was backed by the intelligence services of South Africa and Rhodesia. They resented the government banning opposition parties and its persecution of people who had benefited from colonial rule. RENAMO's first recruits were FRELIMO dissident elites. The conflict went on for 15 years. In the beginning, the rebels were a small volunteer force. After the fall of the Rhodesian government in 1980, there was a change in tactics. Over time RENAMO's hallmark became forced recruitment, systematic violence against civilians and a plunder economy. The rebels “engaged in scorched-earth tactics targeting all government-provided or enabled services; it is estimated that 40% of Mozambique’s agricultural, communications, and administration infrastructure was destroyed.” (https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/mozambique-civil-war/)

Both sides used forced relocation and fortified villages. As the war raged on Mozambique's resources were destroyed or rendered useless. By 1989 there was little left to support the war effort. Both sides were reliant on their foreign backers. In 1988 the US and South Africa cut their covert support for RENAMO. Between 1989 and 1991 East German, Zimbabwean and Soviet support for FRELIMO dried up. Peace talks followed but RENAMO repeatedly flouted the ceasefire for 2 years. They did this to get payments for sticking to the peace process. The war was resolved through negotiation. Residual RENAMO forces continued a low-level insurgency until 2016.

Final analysis: restricting the revolution to one, small, backward country and the influence of Stalinism doomed Guinea to return to the capitalist sphere of influence. Cabral himself was aware of this and tried to forge links with his counterparts in the other Portuguese colonies, by the time he reached out factional infighting was too ingrained to foster cooperation.

In regards to Sevimbi: Correct thinking and the right ideology are critical, going down the wrong path can be downright counter-revolutionary. Savimbi's example is a clear indictment of Maoist ideology and methods. Only Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist democratic centralism can show the masses the way to a socialist society successfully.

The Angolan and Mozambican nationalist movements failed to bring prosperity to their countries because they did not have a clear plan for transitioning to a socialist society. The people's struggle was derailed by infighting made worse by foreign meddling. The war for independence and the ensuing civil wars were entangled in the larger geopolitics of the time.

The failure of the Carnation Revolution is best summed up in Marxist.com: In 1974 "capitalism was dead" in Portugal, only the leaders of the workers' parties were able to revive it.

Not for the first or last time, the responsibility for the failure of the socialist revolution lay with the leaders of reformism and Stalinism.

With their assistance, the capitalist class was able to gradually reconstruct its state machine, transfer ownership of the economy back into private hands, even organise a new political party and eventually win a national election again.

Additional Sources:

*J.P.BORGES COELHO,PORTUGUESE STUDIES REVIEW 10(1)(2002):129-501 Paper presented at the Portuguese/African Encounters: An Interdisciplinary Congress, BrownUniversity, Providence MA, April 26-29, 2002. An earlier version focusing on the Mozambican casewas presented at the Second Congress of African Studies in the Iberian World, held in Madrid, Spain,in 15-18 September 1999, and was published as João Paulo Borges Coelho, “Tropas negras na guerracolonial: O caso de Moçambique,” in José Ramón Trujillo, ed., Africa hacia el siglo XXI (Madrid: SialEdiciones, Colección Casa de África 12, 2001)*

Amílcar Cabral and the African Revolution

Arturo Rodríguez 25 May 2016  https://www.marxist.com/2016-05-25-14-39-14.htm

The Portuguese Revolution 

Alan Woods  28 November 2006  https://www.marxist.com/portuguese-revolution1974.htm

Worker's history: Portuguese Revolution of 1974 

Phil Mitchinson  25 April 2019  https://www.marxist.com/workers-history-portuguese-revolution1974.htm

CIA World Factbook 2015

CIA World Factbook 2018-2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/23/world/jonas-savimbi-67-rebel-of-charisma-and-tenacity.html

Mozambique: war of independence    https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/mozambique-war-of-independence/

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/cabinda.htm

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/101515/biggest-oil-producers-africa.asp

Additional notes:

MFA, AFM (Armed Forces Movement): Group of junior officers who became disgruntled with the government's handling of the colonial wars. They were left-leaning and somewhat open to revolutionary ideas. They were responsible for bringing down the Estado Novo regime and for withdrawing troops from the African colonies. They eventually formed a national unity government that organised elections in 1976. (the working class lost that election)

By Rufus Tyler

In September 1970 Salvador Allende was elected into government at the head of a left-wing coalition, the Unidad Popular (UP). Even though the coalition was reformist, the bourgeoisie still feared the revolutionary potential of the UP government:

The possibility that the industrial cordons (suburbs surrounding Santiago and other cities where factories were concentrated) would react to the military maneuvers and launch themselves into combat in defense of the revolution represented one of the main fears for the Chilean coup-plotters. But such a response never happened.

La posibilidad de que los Cordones Industriales reaccionaran a las maniobras militares y se lanzaran al combate en defensa de la revolución representó uno de los mayores temores para los golpistas chilenos. Pero tal respuesta nunca llegó. A continuación, un fragmento de Chile 1970-1973. Mil días que estremecieron al mundo (LOM ediciones, 2016): 

As highlighted by the historian Maria Angelica Illanes: “the topic of the history of the Unidad Popular and the industrial cordons should be, more appropriately, be called that of the unarmed insurgency of the Chilean way. A topic that truly makes up the great question of the workers' movement history in Chile.

Como lo subraya la historiadora María Angélica Illanes: «El tema de la historia de la Unidad Popular y de los cordones industriales debiera ser, más bien, el de la no-insurreccional idad armada de la vía chilena. Tema que en realidad constituye la gran pregunta sobre la historia del movimiento obrero en Chile».

Understanding the end of the UP in 1973 means looking at the preparations and machinations of the political opposition, business magnates, paramilitaries and military coup plotters as well as the corresponding measures undertaken by the left and the workers in the industrial cordons.

Following the “Tanquetazo” counter-revolutionaries launched an intensive ideological campaign against the government: the idea was to couple this with the opposition's “Winter Strategy” in order to prepare the ground for military intervention. The campaign used to speak of imminent, or ongoing, revolution, one which would have “nefarious” results, carried out by agitators, provocateurs, utopian revolutionaries, professional revolutionaries. The campaign aimed to validate and reinforce national values, while repudiating the “threat to democracy” of “the Marxist dictatorship”.

The campaign frightened a population already weary because of everyday concerns: the petty bourgeois had used their economic power to undermine the government. The truckers strike, and the related taxi drivers' strike (both financed and organised by the CIA) had brought the country to a  standstill: in addition to refusing to carry goods from suppliers to factories and markets, meaning workers were idle and shelves were looking bare, they physically blocked roads preventing people from getting to work, stopping sympathetic truck drivers(especially ones working with co-operatives) from carrying loads, and so on.

In 1973 the memory of these employers' strikes was fresh in people's minds. At the same time shopkeepers were destroying their wares in order to create an artificial scarcity: they would pour cooking oil and milk down the drain, they'd leave meat and chicken out without any refrigeration, spoiling them on purpose. Presumably they were doing the same with other food as well.

This caused an unprecedented panic among middle class people who were used to buying whatever they wanted. For the first time ever they experienced what it was like to be poor. The right insinuated that there was an armed, organised, effort on behalf of workers to undermine existing power structures. The effort was framed as a foreign intervention trying to destroy Chile (whatever that means). According to the right wing press the industrial cordons were revolutionary hotbeds of activity arming themselves for a 'popular takeover', ready to implement a workers' dictatorship.

The campaign was very successful, petty bourgeois types were truly scared of what was to come. My own father was a conscript in the army at the time, his unit was deployed to guard shipments of potatoes. This was totally unnecessary as no one wants to steal potatoes – they are virtually worthless in dollar terms. Still, the deployment had the desired effect: my father's family was terrified that he would be killed by an extremist looking to nick a few spuds for the sake of destabilising the country.

It was exactly these sorts of folks, my father's family, who supported the coup because they feared repression. In the end they too were caught up in the military dictatorship's repression: our family had been gun owners, these arms were confiscated(with no compensation) despite the fact that they had been staunch right wing supporters. They had to suffer curfews, checkpoints, car searches and other indignities just like everybody else.

Right wingers had exaggerated the risk of the industrial cordons, also playing up the fear that cities would be cut off by these cordons, starving them. The cordons were represented as a tool through which Marxism would be able to exercise control over the means of production, residential areas, learning institutions, and, in general, exercise control over all civilian activity in Greater Santiago. 

The press continued to play up these baseless fears and, without pretense, advocated for an armed response against Allende's government. Que Pasa magazine, April 1973:

En una emergencia, la ultra izquierda puede dejar a Santiago sin servicios públicos: agua, luz, correos, teléfono y telégrafos y locomoción del Estado. Ferrocarriles y LAN no serán tan fácilmente paralelizables, pero ello también se conseguiría en definitiva mediante la acción de los campamentos y cordones». 

In an emergency, the ultra-left can leave Santiago without public services: water, power, the post office, telephone and telegraphs and public transport. Railways and the national airline would not be so easily paralised, but that too can definitely be achieved through the actions of informal settlements and the cordons. 

The constant attack against the cordons was also led by DC (Christian Democrat) labour leaders who were, and still are, in league with existing power structures. They railed against the rising revolutionary sentiment of “people power”, and tried to curb and undermine it at every stage.

The press, especially the paper of record, El Mercurio, owned by the Edwards family, did its part by constantly talking of the possibility that the government would be overrun by extremists. This was clearly meant to terrorise the population.

En su editorial del 5 de agosto de 1973, El Mercurio escribe que «la acción de grupos armados continúa, pese de los esfuerzos de los militares por contener esta acción subversiva». 

In its August fifth, 1973 editorial, El Mercurio wrote:”the actions of armed groups continues, despite military efforts to to contain these subversive actions”

 According to Que Pasa magazine the answer was obvious: only the military was able to stand up to the danger the cordons represented. To top off this onslaught, in August 1973 the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) approved a constitutional charge that the government had overstepped its mandate. This text served to justify the coup while explicitly denouncing “people power”. Its end goals were to substitute legitimately acquired powers  and to serve as an ideological base for a totalitarian dictatorship.

Until the last moments of the UP government, most of its constituents kept repeating the mantra: “no to civil war” without realising that the war had already begun. Just days before the coup the Communist Party harangued its militants by affirming: “just like the legality of the government is a force against the coup, so too is the professional spirit of the rank and file of the Armed Forces”

One of the military's biggest lies was that the left was ready, well armed and well prepared to carry out a “self-coup”, aiming to do away with democratic institutions. Part of this was the fictitious “Plan Z” which claimed that there were 15,000 dangerous, foreign guerrilla fighters in the country. This spooky vision was ever present in the dictatorship's white paper which was edited by the reactionary historian Gonzalo Vial.

All these allegations were disproven by subsequent investigations, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1990. Its investigation uncovered that there had been virtually no armed resistance on the day of the coup. Most witnesses testified that none of the political parties had any inkling of the widespread violence that the coup would unleash.

Today, Carlos Altamirano (Senator 1969-1973, General Secretary of the Chilean Socialist Party 1971-1979) states: “I maintain that, fundamentally, the great oversight, the great error of our government...was attempting to carry out a revolution without weapons. An unarmed revolution” This very same “historic oversight” was at the centre of self analysis of the CP from 1977 onwards. The left's tactic before 1973 was to respect the internal workings of military institutions.

Allende and other gradualists proposed maintaining the military's monopoly on weapons in order to maintain its cohesion, looking to integrate them into a civil-military cabinet which would peacefully carry out social reforms. This plan was in contrast to the MIR's (Leftist Revolutionary Movement) and the CP which tried to do some clandestine political work among junior officers and enlisted men. However, their military capacity was severely limited and they achieved little.

At the time most leftists, including the CP, believed that the vast majority of the armed forces would support the government in case of a coup. (tancazo e.g.) The UP placed all its hopes on the very military which overthrew it. According to Adonis Sepulveda, a socialist senator in 1973 the party didn't and couldn't do any combat planning on its own, its response was tied to that of the government. The government prepared defense plans which were directed by Pinochet as Commander-In-Chief.

The dictatorship's white paper claimed that there were thousands upon thousands of pistols, revolvers, machine-guns, flamethrowers and anti-tank cannons. Altamirano testified that there were less than 1500 people with any military training. That training amounted to being able to fire a light weapon ie, not a crew serviced weapon like a heavy machine gun.

Allende had a Personal Guard which consisted of 150 well armed men. They would have formed the core of a paramilitary plan to defend the UP government against a military plot. The idea was for these men to join up with workers from the industrial cordons and loyal soldiers to slow down the advance of the coup through the Santiago suburbs. Theoretically slowing down the advance would destroy their momentum, lowering morale while giving time for loyalists to react. It was meant to take the wind out of their sails for long enough to stall them. I'm not sure it was a sound plan.

Lessons To Be Learned From the Chilean Coup in 1973

The UP government misplaced its trust in the army, an institution which was established to protect the interests of the local bourgeoisie. The only way for civilians to defeat an army as disciplined and determined as the Chilean army would be to defund it into oblivion. 

In a South  American context not having a traditional army is problematic in and of itself: Chile has boundary disputes with all three of its neighbours, and has been at war with them in the past. Argentinian, Bolivian and Peruvian boog are champing at the bit to shed some blood. Any perceived sign of weakness would be an invitation to war. The ruling class of these three countries use Chile as a sort of bogeyman to sow fear among the populace. To them Chile is the external threat that unites and distracts the proletariat.

If Chile didn't have an army because it had been abolished by a progressive government, this would be framed abroad as some sort of transgression against the natural order of things – the people are entitled to an institution that both defends them and provides a chance for social mobility. The end result would be war.

In conclusion: the UP government was stuck between a rock and a hard place. If it kept the armed forces they would actively work against it, if it banned them it would be defenceless in the event of aggression from foreign bourgeois. The way forward for even a gradualist, reformist govt like the UP would be to foster cooperation among socialists of all countries. Internationalism is the only answer.

As long as capital exists, it will do everything in its power to undermine and destroy even moderate efforts to improve the conditions of the working class.

(Key source was El Porteño.)

The bourgeois had opposed Allende since at least 1958 election, when the americans funded Alessandri in order to beat him. The sixties brought about increased spending by the american intelligence services. The money went into anti-Allende propaganda and to fund Frei's campaign:

from 1962 through 1964, the CIA spent $3 million in anti-Allende propaganda "to scare voters away from Allende's FRAP coalition", and spent a total of $2.6 million to finance the presidential campaign of Eduardo Frei.(Wikipedia)

The FRAP (Spanish: Frente de Acción Popular, Popular Action Front) was a Chilean left-wing coalition of parties from 1956 to 1969. It presented twice a common candidate, Salvador Allende, for the 1958 and the 1964 presidential elections.(google)

Frei was a Christian Democrat, he came from a prominent family. Alessandri was barred by the constitution from serving two consecutive terms as president, otherwise he would have been the oligarchy's favourite candidate for the 1964 election. At first the funding was to be kept secret from voters and high-ranking CD officials.

Covert support for Frei's Christian Democrats began in April 1962, at the suggestion of Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin and the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, with a series of secret payments on "a non-attributable basis"--meaning that the source of the funds was kept a secret from Frei and his party officials (NSA archive, September 25, 2004  Updated: September 27, 2004 )

Later, it became more blatant, and CD officials themselves asked for extra funding

The documents record that on March 26, 1964, Frei's campaign managers met with U.S. embassy officials to go over their campaign budget of $1.5 million for which the party only had $500,000. A memorandum recording the meeting noted that "The Chileans suggested that the U.S. government make up this difference which amounts to one million dollars for the period from now to election time." The "Special Group" which approved covert actions met on April 2 in the White House situation room and authorized CIA financing of the campaign and a compromise with the CIA in which the U.S. source of the secret funding "would be inferred" but with "no evidence of proof." 

On May 14, the Special Group approved an increase in covert spending to $1.25 million to allow the Christian Democrats to "campaign at its full potential." On July 23, the Johnson administration approved another $500,000 for Frei to "maintain the pace and rhythm of his campaign effort." 

The CIA spent a total of $2.6 million directly underwriting the campaign. An additional $3 million was spent on anti-Allende propaganda activities designed to scare voters away from Allende's FRAP coalition.   (NSA archive, September 25, 2004  Updated: September 27, 2004 )

The American government spent over $USD5 million in the 1964 election to keep Allende from power. As a result, Frei became president. The Christian Democrats were, and still are, the ruling class' main way of co-opting working class votes. The CDs had an almost identical platform to Allende's Unidad Popular coalition in the 1970 election (Chilean presidential elections are held every six years). These included: agrarian reform and banking reform. The Christian Democrats were the main tool the capitalists used to undermine the UP. The "Christian Democrats" uses the promise of reform to get the masses to vote for them, even to this day. Their results are dismal, making small gains here and there for a few select families, gains that are wiped out wholesale every time an extreme right-wing government comes to power.

The Allende government was elected with a plurality, the bourgeois used this as a way to discredit the UP, and it was the thing they used to try to prevent the UP from taking power. The way they did this was to highlight that they didn't have a majority and accused the UP of being undemocratic. In a similar way, the venezuelan opposition continues to undermine the democratic process in Venezuela by boycotting elections - which they were doomed to lose - and then claiming that the elections were not representative. 

The ruling class efforts to prevent Allende from taking power continued with a plot to kidnap General Schneider - more on that later.

Capitalists then set different kinds of conditions and provisos: the UP would only be allowed to take power if they jumped through hoops. When there was no outright majority in elections, congress decided who became president. Normally they chose the candidate with the most votes, this had happened three times since the 1930s without any issues. Allende had to sign a  constitutional convention. Under the insistent pressure of Corvalan (General Secretary of the Communist Party) and Co., Allende reached agreement with the Christian Democracy and accepted the so called "constitutional guarantees pact". The acceptance of the "constitutional guarantees pact" by the leaders of the Popular Unity meant a compromise, on their part, not to arm the working class and not to touch any part of the repressive apparatus erected by the bourgeoisie(marxixt.com). The UP could have appealed to the masses to make their voice heard, asked them to intervene in their behalf through mass demonstrations. Instead the UP chose to appease the booge. Allende himself was an idealist, he wanted to work within the existing power structures and he believed that he could compromise with the ruling class. In the end he was proven wrong. 

According to Allan Woods, in Lessons of Chile 1973 (written in 1979):

Nevertheless, the whole of history, and above all the history of Chile, shows that the ruling class is prepared to tolerate the existence of democracy only within certain clearly demarcated limits. In the moment when the bourgeoisie sees its power and privilege threatened, it does not hesitate to break unilaterally with the "rules of the game" (rules established by them in defence of the power and privileges) and destroy the democratic conquests of the working class. 

That is exactly what happened in 1973. Many local socialists and communists were aware of the trap. If the UP had achieved 50.01%, or even 55%, of the vote the reactionaries would have still plotted to overthrow them with a coup.(paraphrase from Adonis Sepulveda, Chilean socialist and one-time senator)

The bourgeois make increasingly outrageous demands today in Venezuela. The Bolivarian government's ongoing compromises viz-a-viz these demands make the revolution unstable. Appeasing existing power structures through monetary policy has brought about hyperinflation.

Similar tactics were waged against Allende's government in the seventies. It is economic warfare. 

The playbook remains the same as we can see with the manner in which Venezuela has been dealt with: 

1. Divest from the economy, 

(Nixon's quote about Chile in 1970: "Make the economy scream") Nixon was afraid that Allende would nationalise the telecoms; ITT - which had been his corporate client when he worked as a lawyer - lobbied his government to take action against Allende. Earlier this year in Venezuela, In a statement issued by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, the government denounced "the repeated aggression of the U.S. Government against the people."

"The Trump Administration has blocked bank transactions, purchases of food and medicine, and has carried out countless actions in order to deny the Venezuelan people their sovereign will and force a change of government through unconstitutional means,"(telesur english)

The US government has confirmed it will divert money away from humanitarian aid programmes in Central America and channel it towards the Venezuelan opposition led by Juan Guaido.

The move follows Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to suspend all future humanitarian aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras until they do more to stop migrants heading north to the US border.(FT  July 18, 2019 )

1. Fund opposition groups: 

Both through overt, legal means and covert, illegal methods, (it used to be the CIA that funded opposition groups, now the National Endowment for Democracy is used, to create plausible deniability.)

National Endowment for Democracy is at the center of a dispute in Venezuela. President Chavez says the endowment's involvement proves US interference in Venezuela, while the NED says it is just promoting democracy.

The United States is using a quasi-governmental organization created during the Reagan years and funded largely by Congress to pump about a million dollars a year into groups opposed to Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, according to officials in Venezuela and a Venezuelan-American attorney.

Some 2,000 pages of newly disclosed documents show that the little-known National Endowment for Democracy is financing a vast array of groups: campesinos, businessmen, former military officials, unions, lawyers, educators, even an organization leading a recall drive against Chávez. Some compare the agency, in certain of its activities, to the CIA of previous decades when the agency was regularly used to interfere in the affairs of Latin American countries. 

One organization, Sumate, which received a $53,400 grant in September, is organizing the recall referendum against Chávez. Chris Sabatini, the endowment’s senior program officer for Latin America and the Caribbean, acknowledged the organization is handing out $922,000 this year, largely to groups opposed to Chávez, and gave out $1,046,323 last year. He said pro-Chávez groups have not received funds because they didn’t ask for any or they rejected the National Endowment’s overtures. Many analysts contend the National Endowment for Democracy was created in 1983 to replace some CIA activities -- covertly supporting political parties, unions, newspapers, book publishers, student groups and civic organizations -- after the agency’s work was reined in by Congress following revelations it carried out everything from assassinations to economic sabotage. 

The NED’s own Web page traces the group’s origins to the late 1960s when lawmakers first proposed creating an institution that would replace the “covert means” U.S. policymakers employed in post-World War II Europe -- including CIA assistance -- with “overt funding for programs to promote democratic values.” (venezuelanalysis.com Apr 2nd 2004 at 9.16pm)

1. Wage a propaganda blitz

(BBC headline: 5 July, 2019)  United Nations (UN) accuses Venezuela of using death squads:

Extrajudicial killings and the planting of evidence are used to remove opponents, a report alleges.,

Sabre-rattling, 

(NY Post May 1, 2019 headline) Pompeo says US prepared to take military action in Venezuela.

1. Sanctions,

(BBC) Venezuela crisis: US announces sanctions against Maduro's son 28 June 2019 The United States has announced new sanctions against the son of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro...The sanctions will freeze any US assets Nicolasito has and bars US firms and individuals from working with him... Announcing the move on Friday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said they were punishing him for serving his father's "illegitimate regime".

1. Sabotage,

Information Minister Jorge Rodríguez claimed the power cut was caused by an "electromagnetic attack".  (BBC Venezuela blackout: Power cuts plunge country into darkness,23 July 2019)  

FtS 07-24: Venezuela: Forth electromagnetic attack so far.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_WgRkxqg38&list=PLNAlnQ4hvLtS36YAUv_3xmLTkvMmNRyCK&index=17&t=0s)

1. Enabling capital flight.

All these actions destabilise the economy; it is, as always, the working class who suffers the most.

Having support among high-ranking armed forces officers is crucial for the imperialist powers' plan to succeed. Look for changes in general-level personnel, like the 1970 kidnapping of General Rene Schneider. Schneider was the constitutionalist commander in chief of the Chilean army who was abducted, and killed, by a group of army officers who wanted to stop Allende from taking power. Schneider was comitted to upholding the constitution, the kidnappers wanted to remove him from the chain of command to facilitate a take-over. Although the CIA denies any prior knowledge of the plot, it handed out USD$35,000 to the kidnappers after the fact, to keep them quiet, to maintain goodwill and for "humanitarian reasons".

(https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/chile/index.html#15). 

On page 64 of Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile (2009) Lubna Z. Qureshi says that the CIA offered USD$50,000 each to general Viaux and an admiral. Viaux and his co-conspirators carried out a failed kidnapping attempt on the 20th of October. Two days later Schneider was abducted. He would be replaced by general Prats, who was also a constitutionalist. Ultimately, Schneiders' death made the 1973 coup inevitable. It showed disgruntled army officers that the US would back them against Allende and it showed them what would happen to officers who stood up for the constitution.(Qureshi)

One crucial event in Allende's presidency was the ("tancazo") tank putsch of 1973. Disgruntled officers moved on the presidential palace with tanks, intending to depose Allende. Officially, Commander-in-Chief General Prats acted decisively and put an end to the insurrection. According to marxist.com the people of Santiago mobilised onto the streets to back the government, showing the plotters that they did not have the support they needed to take over.

Prats would resign in August 1973 after a protest by officers' wives outside his home. It would convince him that he'd lost the support of his fellow officers. Two other generals in key troop command positions resigned in solidarity. Generals Mario Sepulveda and Guillermo Pickering were constitutionalists as well. Pinochet, thought to be loyal to the Allende administration, became the Commander in Chief of the army. 

Another key moment in the Allende administration was the trucker's strike. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it was funded by the CIA. The truckers themselves need to move freight in order to get paid, they were only able to down tools because they were funded.  According to the September 20, 1974, Page 1 of The New York Times Archives:  

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 —The Central Intelligence Agency secretly financed striking labor unions and trade groups in Chile for more than 18 months before President Salvador Allende Gossens was overthrown, intelligence sources revealed today.  They said that the majority of more than $8‐million authorized for clandestine C.I.A. activities in Chile was used in 1972 and 1973 to provide strike benefits and other means of support for anti‐Allende strikers and workers.the Central Intelligence Agency, by using the Chilean black market, was able to increase the basic buying power of the $7‐million estimated to have been spent on clandestine efforts between 1970 and 1973. The unofficial exchange rate, sources said, was as much as 800 per cent higher than the official rate, indicating that the C.I.A.'s cash could have had a local impact of more than $40‐million.

William E, Colby, Director of Central Intelligence, had no comment when told of The Times's information.

The strike brought the country to a standstill: the roads were blocked so travel was severely restricted; factories and workshops had no inputs, no raw resources to work, there was no transport available for finished goods anyway; supermarkets shelves were bare. This is a clear example of a "strike of capital". The main reason shelves were bare was because shopkeepers were hoarding goods - dairy owners tipped cooking oil and milk down the drain, to instigate a shortage, but their stated reasons were that they feared that the people were going to simply loot the shops, shopkeepers elected to destroy their goods rather than allowing the people to have them 

It is similar to Venezuela today, where shortages that are blamed on the government are actually caused by the bourgeoisie - they control the means of production and distribution.

The 1972 trucking companies' strike was defeated by a grassroots movement. The populace came out onto the streets to support the Allende government, that pressure ended the strike.

A significant outcome of the strike of capital was that middle-class chileans experienced hardship for the first time: now they knew what it was like to be a working-class person. This undermined the government's support among these folks, some of whom had been sympathetic to the government up until that point.

The following year the strike returned stronger than ever. At its peak, the 1973 strikes (the taxi drivers' and shopkeepers' strikes) involved more than 250,000 truck drivers, shopkeepers and professionals who banded together in a middle‐class movement (NY Times) in a country of 10.1 million people (google). 

One thing to remember is that Chile's foreign aid endowments for civil projects went down during Allende's administration, while simultaneously its military aid budget skyrocketed. It was a way for the US intelligence services to fund local supporters directly and to build good will among the officers necessary for the coup.

The ruling class was unhappy with the UP, they called the government's agrarian reform "unconstitutional". Some of the farms had been taken over illegally. The UP sent the police in to deal with those extra-legal occupations. Some commentators have said that if instead of protecting existing property relations, the UP had organised the workers' occupations, the revolution would have fared better. Despite trying to uphold existing property rights, these illegal farm take-overs were held up by the opposition as a sign that the government was acting unconstitutionally. It was the pretext needed by the CD to stop its feeble and conditional support for the UP coalition, setting them up for the fall.  

The end of Allende's administration came in September 1973. The CIA found out about the coup two days before it happened, they did nothing to discourage the plotters. When the president learned that there was an insurrection, he refused to arm the workers. Instead he repeatly tried to telephone Pinochet who refused to pick up. Some had floated the idea of abandoning the presidential palace(Palacio de la Moneda) and organising a resistance from the "industrial belt" that surrounds the capital, but Allende insisted on sticking to his "constitutional guarantees pact". He believed, right until the end, that Pinochet was loyal, and that the General had been arrested by the plotters. As recently as six months before the coup, Pinochet had declared himself loyal to the government and a friend to Allende.

Something no-one ever mentions about the Pinochet dictatorship is the cultural damage it did to Chile. All of the leading actors, playwrights, musicians and artists were either killed or left the country with the sole exception of Nobel laurate Pablo Neruda. Neruda's high profile did not save him - he died of cancer, it is a widely-held belief in Chile that he was poisoned with radioactive material that caused his illness. The dictatorship lasted seventeen years, it put the country back, culturally, about twenty years. Throughout that time Chile's artistic output was stunted. When censorship let up after the end of the regime, the artworks produced locally had to deal with the trauma of the previous seventeen years. It is impossible to say where chilean art would be today if it wasn't for all that repression and psychological damage. 

The repressive methods used by the dictatorship have not gone away: today Carabineros (national gendarmerie police) oppress the native Mapuche in southern Chile in much the same way they repressed all workers during the Pinochet years. I personally feel like they're lying in wait, just dying to roll out the same treatment to everyone at the drop of a hat. Oppressing the indigenous population is a dress rehearsal for the next fascist takeover.

To sum up: The UP government failed largely because of US intervention, Allende himself must shoulder some of the blame together with other UP leaders. They allowed themselves to be hamstrung by guarantees that their opponents flouted. In Venezuela today the Bolivarian revolution is hamstrung by its indecisiveness: the revolution is going to fail as long as it continues trying to placate the ruling class. Appeasement didn't work out in 1930s Europe, it didn't work in 1970s Chile and it probably won't work in today's Venezuela.

The only way forward for Venezuela today is to carry out a wholesale nationalisation of the economy; including, most importantly both the means of food production and distribution as well as  the banking sector. Without these policies their revolution will amount to nothing sooner or later.

By Rufus Tyler

“Materialism” as a philosophical notion means that all things in the universe are made of the same thing – matter. There's no heaven or hell, no ghosts or spirits. Materialism is a version of monism

Matter is not a social construct, it exists independent of human ideas and thought. This can be contrasted with philosophical idealism which states that things are influenced and created by ideas, essentially saying that the world is not real and that matter (“things”) are derived from ideas. To idealists reality, and matter, are mere reflections of thought.(ideas)

Dialectical Materialism is one of the three key tenets of scientific socialism, the other two being Historical Materialism and Marxist Economics.

Dialectical Materialism gives us an insight, a way to understand the mysteries of the world.

(Dialectical Materialism is a basic fundamental without which understanding Marxism is impossible)

'Dialectical materialism is the philosophy of Marxism, which provides us with a scientific and comprehensive world outlook. It is the philosophical bedrock - the method - on which the whole of Marxist doctrine is founded.' (https://www.marxist.com/what-is-dialectical-materialism.htm )

Dialectical Materialism gives us the means  to make sense of the world we live in. It is a tool that helps us analyse and comprehend both history and current events. This method is necessary in order to challenge the bourgeoisie's dominant narrative. Without it we are at the mercy of the capitalist class, and can easily fall into the trap of thinking that 'things never change' and, that 'there's nothing new under the sun'. This oppressive narrative is peddled to us daily by the media, the educational system and organised religion. Dialectical Materialism is crucial in overcoming this indoctrination.

(Marxism represents the interests of the working class, and it is diametrically opposed to the views of the capitalist class)

Dialectical Materialism is more than mere words, it lays out a plan of action for the working class. According to Russian Marxist Plekhanov: it is a "philosophy of action.". Formal logic traces its roots to the ancient Greeks who lived over two thousand years ago. Formal logic has dominated Western philosophy and thinking since then. It states that things are impermeable - one plus one always equals two, f.e. (one plus one always equals two, except for very large values of one, where one plus one may equal three.) While formal logic has its uses and its place, it is important to understand its limitations. Dialectics is the logic of change. It sees the world not as fixed and static but as a complex of processes undergoing constant development. Lenin said: "Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they become identical - under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another - why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another." 

Dialectical thinking teaches us to combine syllogisms in such a way as to bring our understanding closer to the eternally changing reality. 

Syllogism Definition

What is a syllogism? Here’s a quick and simple definition: A syllogism is a three-part logical argument, based on deductive reasoning, in which two premises are combined to arrive at a conclusion. So long as the premises of the syllogism are true and the syllogism is correctly structured, the conclusion will be true. An example of a syllogism is "All mammals are animals. All elephants are mammals. Therefore, all elephants are animals." In a syllogism, the more general premise is called the major premise ("All mammals are animals"). The more specific premise is called the minor premise ("All elephants are mammals"). The conclusion joins the logic of the two premises ("Therefore, all elephants are animals").

Darwinism, which covers the evolution of one species into another, and the periodic table of elements and elemental weights which shows us the how one element can change into another were momentous occasions in the growth of dialectics. They were a qualitative leap over earlier forms of classification like Linnaeus' formalised binomial nomenclature, with its rigid divisions and superficial distinctions.

Unlike Darwin, Marx was a conscious dialectician. Marx came up with a way to classify the constant flux of productive forces and property ownership which form the basis of society. This was just as important for the social sciences as Darwin's work was to the natural sciences.

Marx and Engels developed the logic of dialectical materialism from philosophical enquiry into the natural world. By applying this logic to society they developed scientific socialism.(Quantum physics, dialectics and society: from Marx and Engels to Khrennikov and Haven, by Ben Gliniecki )

In other words, although the concept of storing the figures “1” and “0” at the same time seems illogical because they are two different definite finite terms, when we consider that these figures are nothing more than abstractions of processes occurring in the real world, the apparent problem disappears.

Dialectics is quite simply the logic of motion or the logic of common sense to activists in the movement.(Dialectical Materialism, John Pickard, 17 January 2002, Dialectical materialism Theory: Dialectical materialism, marxist.com )

The idea of Marxism is that there will always be periods of gradual change interspersed with periods of sudden change. (Ibid)

NEGATION OF THE NEGATION

A second law of dialectics is 'the law of the negation of the negation', and again it sounds more complicated than it really is. 'Negation' in this sense simply means the passing away of one thing, the death of one thing as it becomes transformed into another.(Ibid)

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISTS ACT UPON THE WORLD, IT IS A KEY PART OF OUR PHILOSOPHY. PRACTICE, ACTION PLAYS A KEY PART IN OUR PHILOSOPHY. (from the Socialist Appeal YouTube channel)

Dialectical thinking analyses all things and phenomena in their continuous change, while determining in the material conditions of those changes that critical limit beyond which 'A' ceases to be 'A', 

The fundamental flaw of vulgar thought lies in the fact that it wishes to content itself with motionless imprints of a reality that consists of eternal motion. Dialectical thinking gives to concepts, by means of closer approximations, corrections, concretisations, a richness of content and flexibility; I would say even a succulence which to a certain extent brings them close to living phenomena. 

We call our dialectic “materialist” since its roots are neither in heaven nor in the depths of our 'free will', but in objective reality, in nature. Consciousness grew out of the unconscious, psychology out of physiology, the organic world out of the inorganic, the solar system out of nebulae. On all the rungs of this ladder of development, the quantitative changes were transformed into qualitative. 

Whereas formal logic was essentially the logic of lifeless, rigid and static relationships, dialectics was precisely an understanding of real life-processes of motion, contradiction and change. 

"Dialectical materialism is not of course an eternal and immutable philosophy. To think otherwise is to contradict the spirit of the dialectic. Further development of scientific thought will undoubtedly create a more profound doctrine into which dialectical materialism will enter merely as structural material."(In Defence of Marxism, p76). 

Some background

Philosophies can be divided into two main camps. The first is Dualism and the other is Monism.

Dualism states that the universe is made of two different things, the material and the immaterial. The material would be all tangible things, that is, matter and energy. Dualism posits that in addition to this there exists a second essence, another building block to the universe.

This second essence would correspond to the immaterial, the spiritual, the soul, heavenly things.

This belief unnecessarily complicates and fuzzies our understanding of the world we live in by introducing the mind/matter question. If the mind is eternal and separate from the material, mortal body, how do they interact, how do they relate to one another?

Dualism mystifies: it doesn't advance our understanding of things.

Monism is the flip side to Dualism. It states that everything in existence is made up of only one substance: either matter or something more intangible, immaterial.

The belief that all things are made of the intangible is called Idealism.

Dialectical materialism is important as a counter to these ideologies, Idealism and Dualism. It rejects these ideas as a backdoor way of justifying the existence of God and, therefore, legitimising religion in a logical manner. Religion is used to control, it is reactionary, backward.

Dialectical materialism is a process that expounds that matter is in a state of constant change. The change may be imperceptible to us on the surface. An example of this concept at work is the action of water boiling. At first, the rise in temperature appears to have no effect, on the molecular scale, however, the increase in energy makes the water molecules move more and more. Eventually, the heat builds up to the point where the water boils and turns to steam.

At first, the change was imperceptible, then sudden and drastic. A quantitative change (the rise in temperature) leads to a qualitative change (turning into steam)

Dialectical materialism is key to revolutionary thought because it shows that change isn't simply possible, it is inevitable. A reminder that even though propaganda tries to portray current property relations as eternal and unchanging, that's just not true.

Dialectical materialism as a process is important in combating the central idea behind Postmodernism. This idea is there are no objective truths, only subjective experiences. It is an invalid ideology, empty, It claims there's no point in trying to make sense of things because there's no real truth to get at.

Postmodernism has no answers, it doesn't attempt to explain the workings of the universe. Because it has no way of being introspective it has no way of analysing things like current events. It can't be used for perspective. It has nothing to offer.

Because their flawed ideology has no answers it claims no else has either. For this reason, it is useful to the ruling class, It imparts a sense of helplessness that encourages complacency. Denouncing such an idea is critical to the revolutionary struggle. Dialectical materialism is fundamental to this ideological struggle.

Conclusion:

Dialectical materialism is often misrepresented on purpose by the bourgeois and their institutions. It has beeen portrayed by folks like Dmitry Orlov (a popular collapsitarian) as a dogma, a fixed and unchanging doctrine. Others have likened it to a “communist bible”, something set in stone. 

The truth of it is that our understanding of dialectics itself could change in the future, we do expect we will come up with a better, more accurate method with which to analyse the world we live in. 

Dialectical materialism remains relevant today because it is an important counterbalance to the prevailing “Postmodernist” thought.

Dialectical materialism is a way of understanding the world we live in, it is a process. The basic tenets are that everything is material and in a process of constant change; matter is both interconnected and interdependent.

Sources:

https://www.marxist.com/what-is-dialectical-materialism.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

https://www.litcharts.com/literary-devices-and-terms/syllogism 

https://www.marxist.com/quantum-society.htm

https://www.marxist.com/abc-materialist-dialectics-trotsky.htm

The Five Stages of Collapse - Survivors' Toolkit (2013) by Dmitry Orlov

by Miles Lacey

In New Zealand there is a phrase that is commonly used in all walks of life: "She'll be right".  Until recently the term generally had positive connotations, reflecting our laid back attitude to life.  In more recent times the term has become increasingly negative as it often refers to a complacent attitude that leads to poor decision making, often of a financial nature.

While the phrase may be unique to New Zealand the mindset behind it is not.  In businesses, government agencies and capitalist societies as a whole the "She'll be right" mindset can be found.  This attitude has often been the reason why so many survivable incidents have turned to tragedies that have claimed the lives of many people.

The Titanic, the Grenfell Tower and the levees of New Orleans were all engineering marvels of their time but all three of these marvels were undermined by the "She'll be right" attitude both in their construction and the way in which decisions relating to them were made.  When these marvels of engineering were put to the test they failed - with deadly consequences.

When the Titanic docked at the port in Southampton it made such an impression that some trade publications were calling her practically unsinkable.  It was the largest ship afloat at the time, it had some of the most advanced safety features on board and the passengers - even in steerage - enjoyed a level of comfort far superior to that available on most ships at the time.  There was only one problem.

When it came to lifeboats only the minimum number of lifeboats required by British maritime law were provided.  That is, only twenty lifeboats.

Even if every lifeboat was filled to capacity only 117 people would’ve been able to get on board yet the Titanic was carrying 2224 passengers and crew.  It’s true there were enough life jackets and life vests for every person on board but they would prove to be useless.  Many, if not most, of the people who died when the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank froze to death in the icy cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean rather than drowned.

What is truly shocking is the “She’ll be right” attitude adopted by the White Star Line (the owners of the Titanic resulted in the reduction of the number of lifeboats from thirty-two to twenty so that the passengers didn’t have to put up with a “cluttered deck”!  (The Titanic: Lifeboats, www.historyonthenet.com)

One would’ve hoped this “She’ll be right” mindset would’ve sunk with the Titanic but it would rear its ugly head again in the Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017.

The Grenfell Tower was an ugly concrete and glass structure built in 1974.  It was an example of the Brutalist style of architecture that was popular at the time.  Because of its reinforced concrete construction, only the absolute minimum of safety features was installed.  Other safety features, such as water sprinklers, were fitted later retrospectively.  These safety features would prove to be useless when the fire that claimed seventy-two lives broke out.

Because the Tower was built in one of the wealthiest areas of London there was always pressure placed upon the council to do something to improve its appearance.  After many years the Royal Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council began to improve the outward appearance of the building by putting up cladding.  The problem was the company that had won the cladding contract - Arconic - had a product that had been linked to high rise building fires in the United Arab Emirates.  The only reason why Arconic won the contract was that their cladding was cheaper than that of their nearest bidder whose product was fireproof.  To save several thousand pounds the Council allowed the Tower to be converted to a death trap.

The fire broke out in one of the tower floors in one of the fourth-floor apartments.  It was the result of an electrical fault that caused an electrical fault.  If the cladding had not been installed the fire would’ve almost certainly been confined to the apartment concerned.  However, the moment flames came into contact with the cladding the fire raced up the side of the building.  As the fire drills had assumed any fire would be contained within one or two apartments most people had no idea what to do when they were confronted by flames coming from outside the building.  The speed of the fire also made it impossible for many of the residents to get out of the building in time.  (BBC, Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Cladding firm “knew of fire risk”, February 20th, 2021 and BBC, “How the tragedy unfolded at Grenfell Tower”, May 18th, 2018 and others.)

During the inquiry (which is still on-going at the time of writing) it was highlighted how the obsession with saving money saw regular replacing of contractors and project managers.  This led to contractors who answered to no one except their own bosses.  This led to many problems both during and after the refurbishment - and it has also made it difficult to determine who is ultimately at fault for causing those seventy-two deaths.

In contrast to the sinking of the Titanic and the Grenfell Tower fire, the failure of the levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina was the product of both nature and the “She’ll be right” attitude.  

In the case of the sinking of the Titanic the ship had sunk after striking an iceberg while travelling at high speed in an area known to have icebergs at that time of year (April 1912).  In the case of the Grenfell Tower fire, an electrical fault triggered the fatal fire.  The electrical fault was caused by years of poor maintenance by the building’s managers.  Both were the result of poor decision making.  In contrast, the collapse of the levees of New Orleans was the result of a Category Three hurricane.  However, nature had little to do with why the levees failed.  As that sounds contradictory, an explanation needs to be provided.

According to the article “The Broken Promise of the Levees that Failed New Orleans”,  which was published in the Smithsonian magazine in September 2015, the levees were constructed out of “a lot of poured concrete, on swishy sand and poor soil; that wasn’t properly maintained”.  Because the levees were constructed out of substandard concrete, used soil that was prone to becoming heavily saturated and had the calculations used for constructing the levees based upon the most conservative interpretation of the data the levees weren’t capable of doing what they had been designed to do.

What made matters worse was the agencies responsible for maintaining the levees and the pumping stations - primarily the United States Army Corps of Engineering - were so confident the levees would hold that they neglected the maintenance of both the levees and the pumping stations.  Tragically, the belief the levees would hold prevailed among many New Orleans residents so many of them refused to leave their homes.

While it is true that the storm surge created by Hurricane Katrina simply swept over the levees in some places the vast majority of the fatalities in New Orleans occurred with the breaching of the levees in several places, in particular the 17th Street Canal.  These breaches should not have come as a total surprise to the authorities because, for over a year before Hurricane Katrina, people in the area had been complaining about their front yards being flooded because of seepages along the levees in the area.  These concerns had not been acted upon.  Perhaps if these concerns were listened to, the weaknesses of the levees may have been detected and measures undertaken to strengthen them.  That failure to act killed nearly seven hundred people in New Orleans, the majority of whom were black working-class people.

It is foolish to claim that a Socialist society would eliminate the “She’ll be right” mindset that had such tragic consequences in the Titanic, the Grenfell Tower and Hurricane Katrina disasters.  The fire and explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the (then) Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1986 proved that.  However, unlike Socialism, the “She’ll be right” mindset is able to flourish within Capitalism because the foundation stone of Capitalism is the profit motive. 

The profit motive often leads to appallingly bad decision making such as reducing the number of lifeboats on an ocean liner, contracting out the installation of cladding on a building to a contractor offering the cheapest rather than the safest product and the designing and construction of essential infrastructure like levees on the basis of the most conservative data available and with the shoddiest materials available.

It is worth mentioning that the loss of lives caused by the sinking of the Titanic and the Grenfell Tower fire could’ve been prevented.  However, in the case of Hurricane Katrina, lives still would’ve been lost for there were many factors that caused the deaths of so many people in that tragedy.  Yet, the death toll in Hurricane Katrina would’ve almost certainly been much lower if the levees had been better constructed using higher quality building materials and if they had been properly maintained.

Disasters don’t happen in isolation.  They happen because of decisions that took place a few years earlier (as in the case of the Titanic) or because of decisions made decades earlier (as in the cases of the Grenfell Tower fire and the failure of the levees during Hurricane Katrina).  They are made worse by decisions influenced by cheap-skate penny-pinching and complacency about how (supposedly) indestructible a marvel of engineering or construction is.

Poor decision making, cheap-skate penny-pinching and complacency are all hallmarks of the “She’ll be right” mentality that flourishes within Capitalism.  Creating a Socialist society won’t eliminate disasters or the “She’ll be right” mindset entirely but it will eliminate the profit motive and the cheap-skate penny-pinching that so often leads to disasters.  Eliminating the profit motive will prevent many, if not most, disasters from happening and reduce the impact of those disasters that can’t be prevented.

Article by Rufus Tyler

The Covid-19 virus most likely originated from the wet markets of Wuhan, China. It is certainly not a manufactured disease as proposed by former United States President Donald Trump – who claimed that it came from a Chinese lab - and it wasn't spread deliberately by American military personnel during the 2019 Kowari trilateral military exercises that were hosted by Australia and attended by the US and China in Northern Queensland as claimed by Chinese propagandists.

The wet markets are ideal places for the disease to jump the species barrier; the animals - whose immune systems are compromised due to stress and a poor diet - are kept in cramped cages, in high heat and humidity, in close proximity to many other species. There's no need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain the emergence of new zoonotic diseases in these conditions.

The outcome of the disease has varied from country to country. China, Taiwan, Korea and New Zealand have, so far, had the most success dealing with Covid-19. These places all share certain strategies that have helped achieve their relative success.

The best way to deal with the new pandemic has been enforcing “lockdowns”: closing non-essential businesses, using close contact tracing, encouraging people to work from home whenever possible and wearing masks when out and about. Frequent handwashing is one of the best ways to prevent infection. Some expect that a vaccine may soon be able to return life back to normal.

Other nations where the government has failed to act decisively have seen soaring infection rates. Just five countries: the USA, India, Brazil, Mexico and the UK account for half of all Covid deaths (https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n314). Together these places make up about 27 percent of the world population or 2,120,385,217 people out of a world population of 7,794,798,739 people in 2020. (https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/)

Social media has been a breeding ground for false claims. These include:

• Drinking bleach will kill the virus that causes Covid-19
• Snorting cocaine can cure Covid-19.
• Covid-19 is caused by 5G networks.
• Drinking boiled garlic water can prevent a person from getting Covid-19.
• Masturbation can protect a person from getting Covid-19.

Perhaps it's understandable that people want to take concrete action to help themselves. Not everyone, however, is motivated by the desire to help. Some hucksters have tried peddling snake oil cures for a quick buck. Most notably a "miracle mineral solution" has been touted as a cure.

Seeking a profit at the expense of people's health is deplorable, especially at times when there is genuine fear and anxiety about Covid-19. What is even worse is that some political leaders are among the worst offenders. Trump has ill-advisedly told people that drinking disinfectant might help.

Another populist president, Jair Bolsonaro, who is sometimes known as Brazil's Trump, has pushed this sort of thing further by insisting his government recommend chloroquine as a cure for Covid. Although he himself was afflicted by the disease, it hasn't stopped him from deliberately misinforming his people. He is reported as saying that if he'd had chloroquine at the time he would have recovered quicker. (https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/using-misinformation-as-a-political-weapon-covid-19-and-bolsonaro-in-brazil/)

Shockingly, he has admitted in private that the drug is simply a placebo. He has said that it's important to let workers feel a false sense of security by giving them some little pill that will encourage them to go back to work.

According to NPR, the ability of the Brazilians to address the challenges posed by Covid-19 have been hampered by how fragmented the health system in Brazil is. Brazil has a three-tier health system that works something like this: (a) there is one public health system that aims to be universal, (b) workers in the formal economy are covered by their work health insurance (with a high out of pocket excess) and (c) wealthier people use private hospitals.

In Brazil, 60% of ICU beds are in private hospitals that serve 25% of the population. The poorest people only speak to a doctor or pharmacist when they are ill and go to the chemist to buy medicine.

Brazil is not the only country in Latin America where Covid-19 has proven to be a difficult challenge. The reasons have been as much socio-economic as they have been political.

According to The Lancet, the Americas account for 48% of all Covid deaths. Crowded conditions, poverty, social discord, poor governance, fragmented and underfunded health systems have contributed to the disease's spread. Underlying health conditions like diabetes and obesity have made the virus more deadly. In Peru, 85% of deaths were in people who were either overweight or obese.

Some 54% of people in Latin America work in the informal economy. In Peru, this number may be as high as 70%. These people have no option but to continue working every day because they have no safety net of any sort. Lockdowns are ineffective in these conditions.

Quality of life, as measured by life expectancy, infant mortality rates and other statistics have improved as a whole but this progress is unequal within Latin American countries. Cuba and Venezuela have bucked this trend over the last ten years.

Putting profits ahead of people's wellbeing is the crux of the problem. The countries that have had the worst outcomes all have tried to put the so-called needs of the economy ahead of public health. This strategy has failed catastrophically. Attempting “soft” lockdowns, ones with a myriad of exceptions – such as classifying businesses like hairdressers and nail salons as essential - has exacerbated the effects of the pandemic in terms of both the economy and contagion/fatality rates.

In Latin America, Pfizer has been accused of "bullying" various countries through practices such as asking for cover against civil lawsuit indemnification and requesting collateral in the form of assets like embassy buildings overseas. 

The lack of social distancing has made sure the “first wave” never really abates before being hit by the “second wave”, all the while the “third wave” looms.

Capitalism is directly responsible for the tragedy that is currently unfolding. The hunters and trappers that supply the wet markets in underdeveloped countries have been driven to eke out a living further and further into the bush, where countless new diseases lurk, because they have been denied opportunities elsewhere. Many of these hunters in China were at one point peasant farmers, smallholders who were unable to compete with large corporations practising industrialised farming.

The cramped, overcrowded conditions in these factory farms are the perfect breeding ground for disease. The industry's solution is the use of prophylactic antibiotics, which causes problems of its own – namely the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. We can certainly expect more outbreaks of new zoonotic illnesses in the future.

Being the source of the problem hasn't stopped capitalism from profiting from the crisis. One way has been through stimulus packages that line the pockets of the ruling class.  The relief packages are espoused as a way to help out the poor but vast quantities of money go directly to corporations, ostensibly to ensure that they continue to pay their workers. In the United States the majority of these stimulus packages went to companies with multi-million dollar yearly profits, many took the payout while still laying off employees. The labouring classes have been left to feed off the table scraps of the rich, and what little money has reached them overwhelmingly went straight to landlords and banks as mortgage repayments.

As the only productive class in society, it will be the working class who will have the onerous task of repaying all this deficit spending through ever more drastic cuts to social services, through increased taxes on consumption and wages. Capital gains will probably go untouched, though.

Another way the ruling class has wound up benefitting from the pandemic has been the introduction of draconian measures which aim to control the population. Protests demanding social justice have been stifled in the Americas through the selective use of social distancing. Large gatherings of people have been banned effectively curtailing dissent.

The clearest example would be the waning strength of Chilean demonstrations against the Pinochet era constitution. The Piñera administration wasted no time in bringing in legislation that framed meeting in large groups as criminal, making them seem irresponsible for risking an increase in Covid-19 transmission. Black Lives Matter in the United States has been treated in a similar way.

In Spain lockdowns have been instituted on a neighbourhood by neighbourhood basis, heavily targetting working-class areas, where there are fewer jobs and fewer medical facilities. These people have been denied a way to seek better treatment. It is a way to instil fear in the population to control them more completely.

In summary, the tragedy has been aggravated by capitalism. It is unlikely, although possible, that the virus would have started without it. The ruling classes' measures and inaction have made the death toll far worse than would've been the case otherwise.

The current nationalistic fighting over who gets the vaccine first will also cause issues. For the vaccine to work it is important that it be rolled out as fast as possible over the entire globe – the pandemic is an international problem that knows no borders.

According to CNN, the Russian Sputnik V vaccine is making inroads in Latin America where the bourgeoisie fear Russian influence and prestige is increasing. Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Venezuela have approved its use. Colombia's soon to follow. Brazil, Chile, and Mexico (again) are going with the Chinese vaccine.

Health officials in these countries have stated that it's easier dealing with a government than a private company. Thus, even the bourgeoisie media and many Latin American health officials have conceded that the answer to addressing the Covid-19 pandemic has been to deal with governments rather than with corporations like Pfizer.

Phasing inoculation slowly, giving it to whoever can afford it first, will simply allow Covid-19 to mutate, rendering the solution useless.

Only a Socialist society, working along internationalist lines can organise an effective response to a true pandemic like this one. Make no mistake, there will be other pandemics in the future, which could very well be more virulent and more destructive. Greedy, grasping capitalist actions – like the ones we've witnessed lately - will doom us. Socialism is the only way forward for humanity.

Image: Mass graves in Brazil for Covid-19 victims. Copyright: antiguaobserver.com

Prior to the European settlement of New Zealand, most Maori lived in small villages where the very notion of ownership was unheard of.  Housing was usually allocated according to the position held by a person, or more commonly, a family within the community.  The houses were usually made of whatever materials were available, especially raupo.  They were also quite small because most of the activities undertaken within the villages were done outside or in communal buildings such as the marae (meeting house). 

The earliest European inhabitants were whalers, ship repairers and missionaries who generally lived in small stone or wooden cottages that were constructed from the same materials used by the local Maori.  By about the 1840s pre-fabricated housing was being brought in from Australia.

Earthquakes in 1848 and 1855 in the Wellington region made builders reluctant to use bricks and masonry for building materials.  Instead, strong timber from native trees, especially rimu and kauri, became the most common building materials.  This, combined with readily available land, meant that most housing tended to be single or double-storey dwellings.  By the outbreak of the First World War the Californian bungalow had become the most common building type in New Zealand.  

Apart from certain inner-city areas or areas with steep terrain (such as Wellington city), the vast majority of homes were privately owned single storey stand-alone dwellings on their own sections.  Many of these private homes were not owned by those who lived in them.  In mining towns like Denniston on the West Coast of the South Island and railway towns like Cross Creek on the Rimutaka (now Remutaka) railway incline in the lower North Island, the homes were owned by companies.   In other places, the homes were owned by landlords and property speculators.  And, of course, slum lords.  

Charities and local councils sometimes provided cheap housing for old age pensioners and certain groups in need of help but, until the 1930s, anyone who was unfortunate enough to end up sick, unemployed or otherwise unable to afford the rents being charged found themselves living in slums.   Discrimination against non-Europeans when it came to trying to buy or rent property also resulted in many people reduced to living in housing that was often little more than wooden and corrugated iron shacks.   Until the Depression, in the 1930s this poverty was mostly confined to a few inner-city areas or in rural areas where it was largely out of sight and out of mind.

During the Depression, many companies went bankrupt while others dismissed some, if not most, of their workforce.  Those employers who did keep their workers slashed their wages.  Public servants faced pay cuts of 20% or more with the result that many people began to default on their mortgages or rents and were evicted.  Slums began to expand and so did extreme poverty, malnutrition, diseases, social unrest and political militancy.  For young unemployed men, their already dire situation became worse as they were sent to work camps in remote areas to do heavy labour such as road construction and were forced to live in work camps where the accommodation was often nothing more than tents.

Traditionally, charities were able to step in and help if people fell on hard times but the demands placed upon the charities by the Depression proved too much for them.  Not only were the numbers of people needing help too great to cope with but they couldn't raise the money they needed to provide help.  

Many of the more liberal clergy, such as the much-beloved “Uncle Scrim", were so shocked by what they saw they began to support the Labour Party and its policy of building state housing.  There is no doubt that Labour's state housing policy was a key factor in their election victory in 1935.

The first state house didn't become available for rent until 1938 and the image of Michael J Savage – the first Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand – helping to move the furniture of the first state tenant into their state home remained a lasting image for generations of Labour supporters.  The house is nothing spectacular to look at: it's a plain-looking timber house with plenty of sun sitting on a quarter acre section in Miramar, Wellington.  Yet this house would be the prototype of thousands of state houses.

During the Second World War state housing construction took a back seat as resources were diverted to fight the war against fascist aggression but, once the war had ended, the government resumed its state housing building programme.  It was motivated, in part, out of honouring its pledge to look after returning servicemen but also by the need to provide employment for them.  Whole suburbs of state houses were constructed and assistance, such as cheap housing loans and rent to buy agreements, were introduced to make homeownership as affordable as possible.  

In eastern Porirua, Lower Hutt, Wainuiomata and south Auckland (to name but a few places) state housing areas grew rapidly.  However, the growth of these areas wasn't fast enough to cope with two major demographic changes.  The first was the rural to urban drift of (mostly) Maori workers who'd lost their jobs on the farms thanks to growing mechanisation and the second was the arrival of Pacific Islanders to work as cheap labour in the factories and on the farms.   

Maori and Pacific Island workers moving to the new state housing areas underwent a major culture shock as they found themselves in an environment where there was no sense of community and where there was little use – or value – attached to their languages, cultures and traditions.  This, combined with their struggle to find work due to racial discrimination and language barriers (in the case of Pacific Islanders), led to many social problems of which alcoholism, crime and gangs were among the more prominent features.

It was from about the early 1950s that state housing areas began to get a bad reputation among the bourgeoisie, especially when it came to young people.  My father was one of those “juvenile delinquents" of “questionable moral character" who were the subject of the Mazengarb Report: a government inquiry into juvenile delinquency in Lower Hutt launched in the 1950s.  (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazengarb_Report)  

Not only did social attitudes towards state housing and those who lived in state housing change from about that time but the type of state housing that was being built.  The stand-alone single-story house on a quarter-acre section was giving way to terrace housing and semi-detached two-unit dwellings.  The quality of the materials was declining as the emphasis switched from quality to building as many cheap state housing units as possible.  The switch to poorer quality building materials led to problems like leaking roofs and pipes, mildew on the ceilings and walls, and homes that were bitterly cold during winters and unbearably hot during summers.  This led to many health problems among state tenants, including children, who were getting illnesses like asthma, whooping cough and rheumatic fever that resulted from poor quality housing.  (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/regional/291866/porirua-says-bad-housing-a-central-govt-problem)  Those who thought this was only a state housing problem were soon to find out that going for the cheapest building materials and builders to save money were about to find out the hard way that this could also happen with private housing.

The proliferation of state housing helped keep private rents down and dramatically increased the quality of private homes.  In many cases, the private homes were being built by the same companies being contracted to build state houses, such as Fletcher.  However, with deregulation of the housing and construction sectors, the watering down of building codes and the opening up of the housing market to foreign property speculators during the 1980s and 1990s would have devastating consequences.

In 1984 David Lange became the Prime Minister of New Zealand and his Labour government began to embark upon a radical programme of deregulating the economy, privatising local and central government services and amalgamating various local governments.  While this was promoted as a means of reducing debt and making both the economy and government departments more efficient and competitive the reality proved to be very different and this was reflected in what happened to housing.

Deregulating the construction industry opened the way for so-called cowboys to enter the construction industry.  Many of them were hired because they were cheap labour rather than trained to any reasonable standards.   According to the October 12th, 2016 Newshub article “The Causes of the Leaky Homes Crisis” was caused, in large part, by building code changes in 1995 that allowed untreated timber to be used in housing frames.  The use of cladding also contributed to leaking homes that effectively made them uninhabitable and worthless.  (https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2016/10/the-causes-of-the-leaky-homes-crisis.html)  

To make matters worse the amalgamation of local councils resulted in many people losing their jobs, including building inspectors.  This resulted in over-worked building inspectors being unwilling or unable to provide more than a cursory examination of buildings before signing them off as fit for the purpose for which they were built: a point that was highlighted in the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the collapse of the CTV building during the February 11th, 2011, Christchurch earthquake.

However, what proved to be just as toxic was the combination of the benefit cuts, the wage cuts that followed the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act in 1991 and the sale of state housing to property investors that were introduced by Jim Bolger's National Government that was elected in 1990.  Not only did these changes help create a housing shortage, especially for low-income people and the working classes, but they left many more people impoverished to the point they could no longer afford to pay their rent or mortgages and they ended up being evicted.  Some state tenants found themselves forced to pay market rental rates.

After the Christchurch earthquake in 2011, the National-led government used the earthquake as an excuse to evict state tenants and demolish the houses, as happened in Cannons Creek in Porirua and much of Lower Hutt, or to sell them, as happened in Titahi Bay.  

Add to this mix the Resource Management Act 1991.  This Act was supposed to restrain urban sprawl and protect the environment.  Instead, the Act was used as a powerful weapon by bourgeoisie property owners to prevent the construction of housing for low-income people, usually by citing the impact on property values.  The costs of complying with resource consents made it uneconomic for construction firms to build housing for low ìncome and working-class people.  It also failed to prevent widespread environmental pollution and water contamination, especially in rural areas.  (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/opinion/122284651/the-end-of-the-resource-management-act-is-nigh)  

From the 1990s onwards immigration policies were relaxed to encourage skilled workers to migrate here, especially ones whose skills and expertise was needed.  New immigration policies also allowed wealthy foreigners to invest in housing and various types of businesses in New Zealand.  This led to large scale purchasing of housing, particularly in Auckland.  Whole suburbs were built to meet the demand for housing that were created by these investors.  Some bought houses to rent them to affluent tenants but others bought houses to simply leave them empty until the value of the properties had doubled or even trebled before selling them in a practice referred to as land banking.

A ban on non-resident foreign ownership of existing housing stock (other than Singaporeans and Australians) was introduced by the Labour-led government in August 2018 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45199034) but this did little to curb the rise of house prices and rent not only in major centres like Wellington and Auckland but also in areas traditionally shunned by most private property owners such as Porirua where the average rent is now $700 a week – the highest in New Zealand!

Article by Sione Ma'u 

After the formation of the Labour-led coalition government in 2017, there were hopes that the housing crisis was going to be tackled. Labour promised a mass house-building programme called “Kiwibuild” that would build 100,000 new houses over a decade. The Government would play an active role in driving this programme and work together with developers, city councils and other landowners (such as iwi) to deliver high-quality housing at affordable prices for first-home buyers.

After Joe Biden was elected President of the United States in November 2020 the big question on most people's minds was if Trump would go peacefully.

That question was answered on January 6th, 2021.

From the moment the election results began to roll in Trump insisted that he had won the elections but that the media and the Democrats had stolen it from him.

Barely a day went by when he did not accuse election officials of counting what he regarded as invalid votes, ignoring ballots and rigging election voting machines. He also made accusations of widespread voter fraud. Yet, when these accusations were made in various court hearings, even the judges whom Trump appointed declared that the elections were conducted correctly and there was no evidence of ballot or voter fraud

From the White House Trump crowed “Stop the steal!” and his administration continued to repeat this mantra to a media and a nation that had, with few exceptions, ceased to take him seriously.

The people who did take him seriously were the MAGA (Make America Great Again) cult that treated Trump as if he was an American Messiah, white supremacist groups like QAnon and Proud Boys and far-right private militia groups. Pro-Confederacy groups, Nazi and Fascist groups who had been emboldened by the Trump Administration also supported Trump's “Stop the Steal” mantra.

On January 6^th, 2021, Donald Trump gave a speech outside the White House in which he called upon his supporters to march on the U.S Capitol building. The reason this date was chosen was that this was the day the U.S election results were due to be made official in Congress.

His supporters not only marched to the U.S Capitol but they stormed it. They occupied the building briefly before they were cleared out. Violent clashes between Trump's supporters and the police took place which left five people dead: one supporter, one police officer and three other people.

Almost immediately the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launched an investigation of what even the most restrained American media were now calling a coup.

Initially, Trump was accused of inciting a riot by calling upon his supporters to march to the U.S Capital to stop the steal but the FBI investigation and the huge amount of information posted on the Internet quickly revealed that these protesters had been planning the takeover of the U.S Capitol for several weeks. The combat gear, the zip ties and the weapons they carried left no doubt they had come to kill or harm specific people.

Two people who were specifically singled out were Mike Pence, Trump's Vice-President because he was the one who was to formally announce the election results to Congress, thus certifying the results, and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Speaker of the House and very vocal critic of Trump.

The mob had not been whipped up into a frenzy by Trump as had been believed on the day.

Indeed, the New York Times article “Capital Siege was planned online. Trump supporters now planning the next one” that was published on January 7^th, 2021 stated:

“The planning for Wednesday's assault on the U.S Capitol happened largely in plain view, with chatters in far-right forums explicitly discussing how to storm the building, handcuff lawmakers with zip ties and disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's elections – in what they portrayed as responding to orders from President Trump.

“This went far beyond the widely reported, angry talk about thronging Washington that day. Trump supporters exchanged tactical advice about what to bring and what to do once they assembled at the Capitol to “conduct citizen's arrests” of members of Congress. One poster said, '[Expletive] ties! I'm bringing rope!”

“Such comments were not confined to dark corners of the Web. They were scooped up by researchers who made their findings public weeks before a seemingly unprepared Capitol Police force was overwhelmed by thousands of rioters, in an incident that left one officer, one rioter and three other people dead.”

Indeed, on January 26^th, 2021, the Wall Street Journal published the article 'FBI Capitol Riots Investigation Shifts Gears' stated that the FBI had extended its investigation to “building broader conspiracy cases after making arrests on lower-level offences”.

It is believed that around 400 people have been arrested for their role in the riots but the FBI is expected to lay more serious charges and indict many more people as they ramp up their investigation to include conspiracy charges. According to the Wall Street Journal article, the FBI has had to bring in a lot of investigators to sift through over 200,000 digital tips gathered from social media, members of the public, confidential informants, local news and surveillance footage. The FBI field officers have spread out across the United States to make arrests, search homes and interview witnesses, family members and associates of those who've been arrested or have been implicated in their involvement in the riots.

Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S Attorney for the District of Columbia, was quoted in the article stating:

“The scope and scale of this investigation and these cases are really unprecedented not only in FBI history but probably DOJ [Department of Justice] history.”

That the riots were not only planned but that such planning extended all the way up to Trump and his key advisors, which include the far-right conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon of Brierbart News (and one of the top twenty people in QAnon), raises serious questions about just how much of a threat to the United States the far right poses and the extent of their influence during the Trump Administration. It is partly to address these issues that the U.S Congress voted to impeach Trump on January 14^th, 2021 (BBC website same day).

As of today (January 27^th NZDST, January 26^th EST), the majority of members of the Senate voted to impeach Trump but most Republicans have voted to call the impeachment “unconstitutional”, which only goes to show how divorced from reality the Republican Party has become from reality.

In the immediate aftermath of the January 6^th riots there were fears that similar violence would flare up again on Joe Biden's inauguration day, January 20^th, with the result about 25,000 National Guards were brought into Washington D.C, key sites including the National Mall and the Washington Monument grounds were closed off to the public and everyone waited to see what would happen. One protester turned up!

Joe Biden's speech, which was broadcast live around the world, was only a short one that lasted barely 26 minutes. It was generally regarded as an ordinary speech that was only made remarkable because it wasn't Trump giving it.

It was a general consensus at the time of the election of Joe Biden, and certainly, a sentiment expressed quite forcefully by our American comrades in several articles that were posted on the In Defence of Marxism website, that Joe Biden was almost certainly going to be a lame-duck President who would do nothing to advance the interests of the working class. Even by the standards of bourgeois reformism, he was unlikely to deliver anything much.

Thus, Joe Biden must've caught many people on the political Left by his actions within twenty-four hours of his inauguration. Among them was the issuing of the following Executive Orders:

• The United States will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord.

• Removing the ban on trans people serving in the United States military.

• Ending the process of the United States withdrawal from the World Health Organisation.

• Revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

• Launch an initiative to advance racial equity and end the 1776 Commission.

• Revoke order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S Census.

• Require the wearing of face masks and the practice of social distancing in all Federal buildings and facilities.

• Stop the construction of the U.S – Mexico border wall.

• Reverse the travel ban from Muslim-majority countries.

• End harsh and extreme immigration enforcement.

• Reverse discrimination on grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation.

• Implement various measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the United States.

• Restore collective bargaining power for federal workers.

• Ask agencies to boost food aid and improve the delivery of stimulus cheques.

• Lay the foundations for the establishment of a federal minimum wage of $15 an hour.

As Marxists, we have no delusions that these are anything other than mildly reformist policies. At best they may provide some short term relief for workers and marginalised groups within the United States but not the sort of changes that only a Socialist society will bring about. However, they must seem almost revolutionary after four years of the Trump Administration during which many basic rights for millions of Americans were trampled over, such as the right of a woman to have an abortion.

Biden's reformist policies have been driven by a perceived need to unite Americans but the problem that neither he nor those whom he has brought into his Cabinet, such as the first black female Vice-President Kamala Harris, is that Trump's Administration has exposed many serious flaws within the American version of bourgeoisie democracy.

As our comrades in the United States have correctly pointed out American democracy is in crisis.

Arnold Schwarzenegger recently tweeted a video in which he repeated a claim often made by many Americans. That is, American democracy provides a beacon of hope and inspiration for the rest of the world. In reality, that sentiment has never been entirely accurate and, within the last few decades, has been nothing more than a bare-faced lie. In an increasing number of countries around the world, the American version of democracy has been held up as a shining example of how not to run a democracy.

The American version of democracy has four key flaws:

1. The President is determined by an Electoral College rather than the popular vote. Every state has a certain number of votes in the Electoral College that is determined by the population of that state. If the majority of votes are cast for a particular Presidential candidate all the votes in that state (with a couple of exceptions) goes to that candidate. This often means that the Presidential candidate who won the popular vote often doesn't become the President, as was the case in 2016 when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Presidential election to Donald Trump because he won the majority of Electoral College votes.

2. There are very few legal safeguards in the U.S Constitution or anywhere else in their legal system to protect against abuses of power by the incumbent President, not least because the President gets to appoint the very judges and other public officials who are responsible for holding the President and their officials to account. Trump, in particular, appointed many cronies to positions of authority including Supreme Court judges.

3. The President can override Congress by ruling by Executive Order. There are no legal restraints placed upon Joe Biden or any other President to prevent them from ruling by Executive Order, apart from the highly partisan impeachment trials where guilt or innocence is determined by party loyalty rather than by whether or not the President did anything illegal and the occasional defiant Supreme Court judge.

4. The mid-term elections ensure that the politicians are always in election mode and, therefore, making decisions based on how it would be received by their financial backers and those who would vote for them rather than what's in the interests of the American people, especially the working classes.

As Marxists, our key criticism of American democracy is that it's not a Socialist state of the workers, by the workers and for the workers. Despite the fact the wealth of the United States was built upon the sweat of the working classes and, for much of its history, slaves the wealth of the United States has been pocketed by a privileged elite that accounts for less than one percent of the population.

Here in New Zealand we often complain about the domination of the Labour Party by reformists, Blairites and the bourgeoisie but there's no doubt there are differences between them and the National Party. From time to time the Labour Party has even passed laws that have benefitted the working classes. For this reason, the working classes still continue to vote for and support the Labour Party and a key factor in why we support entryism in regards to that party.

In the United States, this distinction between the two major political parties does not exist. Both parties have largely dismissed the working classes as an unredeemable, stupid, poorly educated, lazy and bigoted rabble whose votes are only courted in key battleground states where their votes could make a difference. Little wonder that our comrades in the United States believe that the only hope for the working class is for them to form their own political party run on Socialist principles and practices rather than through the Democratic Party.

Covid-19 and the events of January 6^th have changed the United States forever. There will be no return to the way things used to be and this has been grudgingly admitted through the executive orders passed by President Biden. He knows, as well as most Americans, that the burden of the economic and health consequences of Covid-19 has fallen disproportionately upon the American working classes. This has led to the growing radicalisation of the working classes. The problem they face is they don't know who to trust or who to turn to for answers.

Many of them threw their support behind Trump because he at least paid lip service to the need to create jobs and look after the working classes. The fact his policies left them worse off economically, did nothing to improve their job security or standard of living and cost many thousands of them their lives due to his incompetent handling of Covid-19 enabled the Democrats to win many seats in Congress and Senate and may have finally forced both President Biden and the Democratic leadership to accept that “business as normal” just won't cut it in 2021.

Ironically, Trump's MAGA thugs and their extreme right mates may have helped push the Democrats further left than its leadership feels comfortable with because of their actions on January 6^th. It also opens up a very small window of opportunity for the American comrades to stage an intervention, especially as Bernie Sanders still has a lot of grassroots support within the Democratic Party that could be mobilised and even radicalised along Marxist lines.

Regardless of how one interprets the extraordinary events of January 2021 the one thing that cannot be denied is that American democracy has been exposed for the sham that it really is. Those who have borne the brunt of the suffering and pain that American Capitalism has created and which their so-called Democracy entrenched have had enough and they want practical and proven solutions to their misery. Thus, only a Socialist United States of America of the workers, run for the workers and chosen by the workers of America can free them from the evil that is American Capitalism.

State of parties after the count on election night (Turnout 82.5% - up 2.7% on 2017)

(*Special votes (overseas votes) yet to be counted ** Māori Party lead Labour in electorate -special votes will determine outcome)

A political earthquake struck New Zealand on general election night with the Labour Party securing a second term in office with an absolute majority. This is the first time since the MMP voting system was introduced in 1996 that a political party has won such a majority.