Everything is f***ed - So what do we do now?

Image by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash

Lisbeth Latham

Over the last weeks of December, the COVID situation in Australia has deteriorated, every day we see new records in the number of infections, as the health systems strain under the pressure of both infections and exposures. In response governments at both the national and state level have responded with both blame-shifting and with attempts to redefine our way out of the crisis, most notably with a change in the definition of close contact. In context, after two long years of the pandemic, it is easy to feel exhausted, demoralised, and it is easy to want to blame someone - there is plenty of blame to go around - but we can’t afford to feel any of those things for too long - as it is up to us to get ourselves out of this mess - because we can if we work together.

Many people have looked on in horror as Australian states, most notably NSW and Victoria, have loosened public health restrictions whilst COVID case numbers began to climb and the world faced the potential problem of the new Omicron strain of COVID which was widely feared as being more infectious. The decision to open up, despite these concerns, was justified on two levels, the first were claims by some public health figures that while more infectious Omicron could potentially be less serious and thus help as a way out of the pandemic - it should be noted that at the time these claims were first made there was very limited evidence to support this view. Secondly, concerns of exploding case numbers were dismissed as fear-mongering. Finally, the repeated statements that it was necessary to “live with COVID” have carried both a sense of inevitability of widespread infection but that those who remain concerned about the danger of pandemic as somehow detached from reality. While this may appear new, it is important to understand that if the like of Morrison and Perrottet had had their way, the current response to COVID would have been the response in March 2020. The reason it wasn’t is they knew that people wouldn’t stand for it, but now twenty months into the pandemic people’s energy and resilience has been eroded and many more people are open to neoliberal selfishness that prioritises individual interests over collective good.

It is extremely important to reject any idea that it was inevitable we would get to this point, whether due to the need to “live with COVID” or because of how infectious Omicron is. The current situation was anticipatable, and it would have been possible to take actions that would have limited and prevented the current explosion in case numbers. However, the necessary steps would have meant asking people to make sacrifices - an ask that is increasingly difficult both because the sacrifices that people have been asked to make have been so uneven and because of the almost constant media commentary decrying public health measures which have eaten away at people’s resilience, particularly after months and months of sacrifice and hardship. A significant factor that has warn down Victoria has been the ongoing mobilisation of anti-vaxx forces, urged on an encouraged by the Liberals and sections of the media, that clearly cowed the Andrews government into seeing efforts at stronger health measures as being untenable.

So, what do we do? Well our starting point has to be accepting reality. First, this pandemic is going to be with us for some time, it can’t be wished away. Secondly, the pandemic is being exacerbated by inequality, both on a local, national and international stage. Finally, the globes productive capacity in many areas is at their limits, while this is exacerbated by dynamics of the capitalist drive there are real shortages and these won’t be overcome easily, our responses need to take this into account.

At present, we can’t immediately shift government decisions. However, there are many health measures that individuals can take to help contribute to minimising the spread of COVID. The most obvious are things like maintaining our mask-wearing, irrespective of government direction, socially distancing, minimising our socialising, limiting our movement to what is necessary. Obviously, some people will be in a position where there this is more possible than in others. In workplaces, where contact is necessary, then we need to collectively be seeking to win and enforce measures that seek to eliminate and minimise the risk of exposure of workers to COVID. However, the problem is that, with the current close contact definition, many workers who are exposed to COVID, and who should isolate, won’t qualify for PCR test let alone state financial support exacerbating the extent that during this pandemic that public health will come down to the individual decisions of workers and their own financial decisions.

For this reason, we must be looking to demand a change of course by the state and federal governments:

• Immediate reversal of the close contact definition adopted at National Cabinet 
• Immediate action to make Rapid Antigen Testing free and readily available 
• Creation of a genuine job subsidy system to support all workers and sole-traders unable to work due to COVID exposure or closure of workplaces 
• Reinstatement of the COVID pandemic subsidy for all recipients commonwealth payments
• Immediate action to increase funding to public healthcare system to enable these systems to initially sustained through the pandemic and then expanded
• Expanded support by Australia to ensure poorer nations have expanded access to vaccines as an urgent step to limit the emergence of new COVID strains

The Morrison government will not simply agree to any of these actions, for that reason we will need to look to work collectively to place social, industrial, and economic pressure on the government through whatever mechanisms are available to us in the context of a global pandemic. It will be hard work, but persistent and expanding pressure can shift their actions, not because they suddenly care about us, but because they understand that we won’t stop.

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Italy: Joint union call for anti-fascist demonstration in Rome

“No more fascisms” Landini, Sbarra and Bombardieri,
16 October demonstration in Rome

October 10 protest by CGIL members in response to the fascist attack, source: CGIL 

Statement by Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL), Italian Confederation of Workers' Trade Unions (CISL), and Italian Labour Union (UIL)

Posted on 09/10/2021

"The CGIL, CISL and UIL will organize a major national anti-fascist demonstration for work and democracy on Saturday 16 October in Rome". This was stated by the general secretaries of the three trade union confederations, Maurizio Landini, Luigi Sbarra and PierPaolo Bombardieri.

“The squadron assault on the national headquarters of the CGIL” said the three union leaders – “is an attack on all Italian union confederations, on the world of work and on our democracy. We ask that the neo-fascist and neo-Nazi organizations be put in a position to do no harm by legally dissolving them”.

“It is time” concluded Landini, Sbarra and Bombardieri, “to affirm and implement the principles and values of our Constitution. We, therefore, invite all citizens and the healthy and democratic forces of the country to mobilize and take to the streets next Saturday ”.

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How do we build support for COVID vaccinations?

Lisbeth Latham

As the drive to raise vaccination rates increases and concerns regarding the ability of many industries which have either been shut down or pushed remotely to be able to safely return to the workplaces, there has been increased discussion of whether and how vaccination should be made compulsory. While the events in late September on Melbourne construction sites and outside the offices of the Construction and General Division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining, Maritime, and Energy Union, has been the most visible articulation of this debate it has not and will not end there. As both governments and individual employers have moved to make vaccines mandatory. In my view, much of this discussion misses the point. At best it distracts from the broader discussions that need to be had about how, in the context of COVID, we can ensure that workplaces are safe for workers and the broader public. At worst the discussion gives succour and ammunition to the bad faith and anti-working class actor in the anti-lockdown/anti-vaccination camp.

What are Vaccine mandates?
Vaccine mandates are legal requirements for people to be vaccinated to do specific activities. They should be based on medical evidence to support the requirement for vaccination to make a space safe. However, any legal requirement to be vaccinated needs to contemplate the need and make exemptions for individuals who are medically unable to be vaccinated - this accommodation does not need to mean the individual will perform the same duties, indeed there may well be a need to adjust their duties to protect them from the risk of exposure. Such medical mandates are not new, they already exist in a number of work contexts where exposure to or potential risk of transmission of specific communicable diseases are considered high.

In response to both hypothetical and concrete discussions regarding the introduction of workplace mandates, there has been a growing argument that such mandates are “heavy-handed” and remove choice from working people. The majority of these statements have come from organisations and individuals who ostensibly support and promote vaccination - although some, such as the LNP aligned “Red Unions”, which are clearly bad faith actors, and are openly hostile to vaccination and seeking to build themselves on the most likely false promise of defeating mandatory vaccination. I have concerns about direct objections to mandates, particularly on the basis of “choice”.

First, by focusing on an objection to mandates, individuals and organisations get distracted from their ostensive objective, which is supposedly maximising the number of people who are vaccinated. In doing so they tend to inadvertently lend their arguments to those opposed to vaccinations, for whatever reason they may oppose it. It is vital that those who recognise the need for mass vaccinations to promote workplace and public safety, not get distracted from supporting and facilitating people being vaccinated.

Secondly, the use of language regarding “choice” is a misnomer. Mandates don’t remove choice, they do however change the potential consequences of that choice. It means that in those parts of life, where medical advice is that vaccines are necessary, the individual in choosing not to be vaccinated is choosing not to be able to be in that space. This is no different to if individuals refuse to wear personal, protection, equipment, that choice means they cannot perform certain work. While there are differences between a vaccine and PPE, there are two things to note. The first is that many of those who defend their right to refuse vaccination, also demand the right to refuse to wear masks or follow other health advice with regard to minimising COVID transmission. The second is that refusal to follow safety requirements does not simply have potential personal impacts, it can put others at risk, this is particularly the case with COVID where there is the strong risk of not only further transmission but also the strain that transmissions have on the health care system and the ability for that system to provide other care to the community.

Thirdly, in focussing on vaccine mandates, we risk allowing employers and governments to avoid the equally important discussion about what other OHS measures need to be put in place to ensure that employers meet their obligations to provide safe workplaces. To counter this, workers and their unions need to be demanding consultation by employers not just about vaccinations, but other elimination and mitigation steps that are necessary in the workplace - these measures should not be just about direct risks of the virus, but also processes for ensuring that if there are requirements for members of the public to be vaccinated in order to interact with the workplace that the mechanisms for ensuring this is safe for workers.

Finally, many of the anti-vaccination forces are deeply cynical and willing to coopt and misrepresent arguments in order to buttress and built their position. The most obvious example of this is the cooption of the language of the reproductive rights movement as slogans of the movement. As such, it is important that we take every measure possible to ensure that any argument that we make cannot be used to argue against our objective, the vaccination of the maximum number of people possible in order to maximise public safety and health.

Instead of raising concerns regarding the potential of compulsion with regard to accessing vaccines what the movement needs to be focusing on is how we help to build public support for getting vaccinated. This is not new. Unions have a long history of build public support for health and safety campaigns - to normalise and make natural the steps necessary to keep people safe. This should be our focus. How do we, as a movement, expand the support for and the understanding of the need to be vaccinated and to continue to follow all public health measures to help reduce the transmission of COVID. In doing so we will not only make mandates irrelevant, but we will strengthen our ability to enforce safe workplaces that put health and safety before profits, and also constrain and limit the space that reactionary forces have to use the anxiety around COVID to build a movement against the interests of working people.

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The sobering reality of opening up

Lisbeth Latham

In recent weeks, political and media commentary about the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia has focused on the question of when, in the context of growing vaccination rates, the country should consider ‘opening up’ (in this context a permanent and total break from lockdowns).

This discussion conveniently ignores the reality that the situation in Australia -particularly in NSW and Victoria - is increasingly out of control and, consequently, neglects the more urgent questions of what should be done now. Despite the situation in NSW, the state government is pushing ahead with its plans to lift restrictions for the vaccinated leaving many of the poorest and most culturally and linguistically diverse local government areas in lockdown[1].

Are Lockdowns sustainable?
This is not a simple question. Nonetheless, it is the case that there is a limit to how long the current lockdowns can be sustained. This is due to the insufficient support being provided to those in the most economically precarious circumstances. This lack of support, which has only worsened as the pandemic has progressed, only serves to punish workers whose work has enabled communities to lockdown in the first place. If this was addressed, the capacity to maintain lockdowns would be expanded, yet at a certain point key sectors of the economy - those necessary for sustaining lives - would also be disrupted. Luckily, no one has ever suggested permanent lockdowns. Instead, governments have advocated for lockdowns of sufficient length to suppress the virus to levels that enable us to protect lives and health.

Mental Health
A major argument against lockdowns has been that they contribute to community mental health concerns. There is no doubt that lockdowns are tough; loneliness and isolation are significant predictors of mental health problems and lockdowns are often very lonely experiences. In addition to these commonly shared impacts, many people are experiencing additional stressors. These include the constant threat of infection; concerns around income loss and the cost of living; relationship stress arising from home confinement; and supporting and caring for children with little to no understanding of the restrictions’ purpose or necessity

However, much of the media discourse around mental health feels disingenuous, many commentators seem to believe that lockdown is the only cause of the current strain on the mental health system and that it’s lifting the only solution. Such commentators conveniently ignore the range of support mechanisms that could be further deployed to support community mental health. Furthermore, their constant depictions of lockdowns as wrong and corrosive are demoralising and may negatively impact people’s ability to cope and persevere. Lifting the lockdowns in the context of widespread community transmission is a recipe for mass infections and large scale death - both of which would devastate communities, particularly when the people dying are your loved ones. Too often media discourse around the psychological impact of lockdowns is nothing more than a cynical exercise aimed at building pressure for opening up, with little or no consideration for people’s actual mental health.

Debate in epidemiology
From the beginning of the pandemic, there have been notable discrepancies in the advice being given by epidemiologists regarding the preventative measures that should be applied to minimise the spread of COVID-19. To an extent, these differences should come as no surprise; COVID is a novel virus and it took time for the mechanisms via which it spreads to be fully understood. Furthermore, with professional reputations at stake, it is unsurprising that many experts have doubled down on their own position or attacked the conflicting opinions of their colleagues. The additional seduction of building a media profile by publicly endorsing or criticising government position(s) has not helped matters either. Nonetheless, a much bigger debate has unfolded within epidemiology throughout the crisis. This debate centres on how and when to make judgements about the adoption of various preventative public health mechanisms. On the one hand, epidemiologists from the “medical-based evidence” camp have resisted adopting measures without conclusive evidence that supports their value or efficacy. These experts argue that the potential cost of such mechanisms far outweigh any benefits - benefits which they say are at best unproven and at worst, nonexistent. On the other hand, were the epidemiologists who argued that, in the context of a major global public health crisis, it was neither possible nor prudent to simply wait for the evidence to come in. For these epidemiologists, adopting measures such as masks and social distancing was essential because their potential to curb infection risk far outweighed any potential costs, most of which were financial. This debate has occurred publicly, most noticeably in the Boston Review, but also in the exponential increase of opinion pieces and media interviews with epidemiologists regarding not only what actions work, but also what level of effectiveness is worth the social and economic cost. Early in the Pandemic, in response to statements by Bill Gates that “COVID was a once in a lifetime pandemic”, Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis wondered if the coronavirus pandemic might rather be a “once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.”

I’m not in a position to judge the scientific merits of the modelling, but it is important to recognise that these judgements are not purely objective, but informed by subjective judgements regarding how we ought to weigh threats to life against the economic impacts of policy options. I personally stand by the idea that preserving human life and health is where we need to place our priorities - not only because saving lives is the whole point, but also because of the harmful impacts mass illness and death have on people’s livelihoods and the economy at large. Those who prioritise the economy at the expense of human life are not only lacking in empathy but have an unaccounted for, built-in error in their calculations.

Vaccinations: are they a magic bullet?
Since the emergence of viable vaccinations for COVID - public discourse has shifted towards the idea that the way to deal with the virus is to focus on mass vaccinations and that a vaccinated population would effectively eliminate the need for lockdowns. This argument has a number of flaws. First, reaching mass vaccination has been slow. This is understandable, since achieving mass production of vaccines takes time. In particular, the mNRA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna are essentially new technologies, meaning that whole new production and supply chains have had to be created from scratch.

Related shortages in production have contributed to and exacerbated the uneven distribution of vaccines globally. This is not just devastating for those populations left unvaccinated and who are left more vulnerable to infection and death; the mass transition also creates much better conditions for the mutation of the virus and is associated with the development of new strains, some of which may be more infectious, more deadly and/or more resistant to available vaccines. For this reason, it is essential that overcoming global inequalities in vaccine distribution becomes a priority for all rich countries, including Australia - not just as an act of solidarity (though this should be the primary driver) but also as an act of self-preservation.

In addition to the problem of vaccine inequality and the associated risk of new and increasingly deadly strains, much of the discourse around vaccination has overstated the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing infection, illness, and transmission between and among populations. While the effectiveness of vaccines is uneven, no vaccine for any illness delivers these outcomes. This disjuncture between promise and reality has thus lent undue credence to bad-faith actors, expanding and legitimising opposition to vaccinations and lockdown. Opponents, therefore, argue (or at the very least imply) that inaction is preferred to measures that cannot guarantee a 100 per cent success rate.

Still, the reality that mass vaccinations will not eliminate the virus has done little to impede the proliferation of media commentary linking mass vaccination to “opening up”. Instead, it has led to a growth in public discourse about the need to “live with the virus”. Such discourse initially relied on technically true statements that the vaccine would make it less likely for the vaccinated to get infected, to become seriously ill, and to die or infect others. Yet as concerning levels of infections continue to be recorded in countries with much higher vaccination rates, the rhetoric from a section of capital, political parties/leadership and the media have attempted to normalise infections and COVID-related deaths, arguing that these are acceptable price pay for ending “unsustainable lockdowns”. This push has, in many cases, been heavily reliant on modelling by researchers at the Doherty Institute whose research has informed the National Plan to transition Australia’s Covid response. What is clear is that this modelling is inadequate, but also that even the most optimistic projections include much higher levels of infection and death than Australia's previous strategy ever contemplated. Moreover, it is also clear that many of the assumptions which underlie this more optimistic projection, such as effective test, track and isolation mechanisms do not currently exist. Australians are thus being softened up for precisely the horrors seen in other countries - horrors which our collective sacrifice of lockdowns was aimed at avoiding.

This pressure is not new. It has been at play in Australia since the start of the pandemic. The idea that the economy should be prioritised over life - a position that was resisted not only by unions, but sections of capital, and most importantly some of the state and territory governments - most notably Victoria, WA, and Queensland - has drawn persistent attacks from large sections of capital, the media, and the LNP. This is despite the complete failure of their preferred model. Thus these ongoing attacks are not only bad in terms of their intent or potential outcome but are divisive and demoralising, sapping people’s reserve of endurance and tolerance. Lockdown is hard enough without constant reminders that it is too hard, unnecessary, or the supposed fever dream of a crazed dictator. While those who think lockdowns are horrible but necessary are unfairly denounced as mindless cultists, such discourse continues to create fertile ground for the conspiracy theories being actively spread by the far-right.

Human Rights
Questions surrounding the implications of lockdown measures for human rights, including the most appropriate means for convincing people to adhere to public health measures have also been a constant topic of debate. There is no doubt that the impact of lockdowns has been uneven, with race and class location significantly impacting certain populations' experience of not just lockdown but also some of the more repressive measures deployed by governments in the name of public health. For this reason, there need to be not only more and better resources allocated to support those in lockdown, but also increased accountability and scrutiny of the actions of the police. Having said this, focusing on the rights of individuals to not be impacted by the state ignores the intent and positive consequences that such health measures have on reducing infection rates. Protection from potentially life-threatening and debilitating illness is also a significant human right and in weighing these two rights we need to form a judgement about where to place our emphasis. In this respect, I am firmly in favour of preventing loss of life and promoting health. Public health orders play an important role in achieving this goal, and in order for them to be meaningful, there need to be consequences for breaching them - consequences which also must be appropriate, proportionate, and consistent in their application.

Pressure on public health
Part of the discussion regarding the response to’ COVID-19 has focused on pre-existing problems in public health systems, both in Australia and across the globe. These critiques point to the impact that decades of underfunding have had on public health systems as part of the neoliberal transformation of our societies. This transformation has effectively reduced both the available staffing in frontline and support roles and the number of available beds. It has also meant that, despite long-standing concerns regarding the risk of an emergent pandemic, little was done to prepare for it. These are important critiques. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that even in the most ideal situation COVID, with its high level of infectiousness and increased risks of hospitalisation and long term complications, would have been a challenge. This can be seen that globally, despite the different capacities of health systems globally, as well as the different suites of policy responses have had varying degrees of horrific outcomes with a few notable exceptions.

Concerns about lifting lockdown restrictions prematurely
This concern is based on the fact that there is only a narrow margin for error and getting the timing and details wrong would put significant pressure on the country’s already strained health care systems. The reality is that while decisions about how hospital beds are used can be made quickly, simply designating additional beds for ICU or ventilation isn’t sufficient. In order to make these arrangements work, hospitals need additional qualified and trained staff - and those staff simply don’t exist. The Victorian health unions went further on September 17 released a joint statement which included: 

‘‘This has been a long, tough and incredibly stressful 18 months for healthcare workers. The impact on their mental and physical wellbeing has been huge. We need the Premier to hold the line and maintain strong public health measures to help keep the pressure on the hospitals and the healthcare workers as low as possible. We must stop counting bed capacity and start looking at healthcare worker capacity, both mental and physical. Healthcare workers are at breaking point. You have no health system without health professionals to run it”.

So, what are we to do? It is true the current lockdown will eventually need to end. However, the question of when and how must be contested. While rates of community transmission remain high you can’t substantially weaken the provisions without also substantially increasing the level of vaccination rates in the community. Even at this point, the measures need to account for and seek to protect those sections of the community that are unable to be vaccinated. This means that most of the social distancing and PPE measures that have been in place for the virus will need to be retained, at least at some level, for the foreseeable future. Finally, we should not accept the idea of a permanent end to lockdowns. In the event that infections rise again, we must continue to look to lockdowns as an option to protect people and to safeguard health care systems which, if overwhelmed, would exacerbate the possibility of further (and otherwise preventable) loss of life.

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1 As a disclaimer, it is important to acknowledge that, like the vast majority of commentators in Australia, I am not an epidemiologist. As such I will not attempt to interpret models or do my own modelling, instead, I seek to simply explore issues that I feel are being overlooked in the current discussion.

This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

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The limits of Modern Monetary Theory as a solution to neoliberalism

Lisbeth Latham

The application by some governments of quantitative easing (the printing of more money) in response to both the Global Financial Crisis and the economic crisis unleashed by the COVID Pandemic has helped to raise interest in the heterodox economics approach of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as the appropriate approach economic development in countries such as Australia. While there are definitely important insights that can be drawn from MMT to inform appropriate budgetary responses, particularly in times of economic crisis, advocates of MMT tend to oversimplify the budgetary problems facing sovereign states during crisis, particularly those states which unlike Australia are not imperialist powers, even if a relatively weak one, and are instead in a dependent position within the global economy, but more importantly, mistakes where the real political struggle around budget priorities exist within the context of neoliberal politics.

MMT is a heterodox macroeconomic approach that focuses on the role of the government in the creation of money/currency and how, with the ending of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971 and the end of the convertibility of US dollars to gold, governments gained greater freedom in their monetary policy due to not being bound by the need to be able to honour their currency with gold.

Central to MMT is the idea that no government which is a sovereign issuer of its own currency can ever go bankrupt as they are able to create more money, and that doing so is preferable to a government borrowing money as it avoids the need to pay interest on such a debt. Some advocates of MMT argue that this glimpse of the true nature of the economy fundamentally unravels the core premise of neoliberal austerity which has seen the deprioritisation of spending public services across the globe.

However, the reason we have seen aggressive attempts globally to wind back social spending is not that the neoliberals genuinely believe there just isn’t enough money to spend on public services. Instead, neoliberal austerity is driven by a desire to transfer as much of the wealth being produced into the hands of capitalists, a process that is driving unprecedented levels of wealth concentration. Everything else is simply verbiage to prettify and obfuscate this drive to boost and concentrate profits. In this context, the answer of “printing more money” is still the question of “how do you maintain a sufficient level of profit growth to maintain the capitalist system?”. Shifting this priority will take a struggle against capital and its governments, and all too often MMT tends to push its advocates away from this conclusion into a tangential argument about whether there is genuinely a limit to the money supply.

By shifting the terms of debate to the question of “is there a limit to money”, advocates accept what are really false arguments of capital and their representatives in government as having been given in good faith. While the neoliberal drive has relied heavily on the appearance of a lack of alternative choices, Thatcher’s insistence that “There is No Alternative” being one of the greatest examples, the reality is that in the midst of arguing for the need for surplus budgets, most advanced capitalist countries have happily racked up deficits but at the same time they have been shifting spending priorities, so simply arguing “there are no limits to the spending” is unlikely to address the reality that these governments want to prioritise spending on subsidising business profits rather than on social spending.

This reality can be seen in the examples which MMT advocates point to as proving their point. For many MMTers the increase in government spending, as if from nowhere, in response to the COVID pandemic and in response to the Global Financial Crisis of the late 2000s, is evidence of the truth and power of MMT as a solution. Whilst this does show that governments can spend more, we need to also recognise that spending has also primarily been focused not on meeting the needs of the general population but on maintaining company profits and avoiding mass defaults - indeed the US government’s bailout of US automakers was tied to workers accepting cuts in their working conditions. Moreover, this spending has not been sustained, not because it “cannot be”, instead it has been intentionally wound back and the previous rounds of spending used as a justification of future austerity. This is not to say that the creation of money cannot be a solution to government finances. However, it does highlight that it is necessary to see the questions of how much money the state spends and on what as being primarily political.

Related to this problem is a tendency of MMT advocates to dismiss the question of taxing the rich as not important, as the government can meet its budgetary needs via money creation, and thus from an MMT perspective taxation only really plays a role in the currency circulation which can include, if a government so chooses, wealth redistribution via social spending. There are a number of problems with these positions. It tends to detach money from the real economy and part of the reason we are seeing unprecedented levels of market capitalisation and accompanying individual concentrations of wealth, is that money is not circulating and is instead being drawn from the real economy into speculation in the stock market. More importantly, there is a tendency to reduce the question challenging the concentration of wealth to an at best secondary question - when in reality it should be the primary one of moving to a point of contestation as to who should control the means of production and not just the means of creating money. This problem is highlighted by John Christensen and Nicholas Shaxson regarding how to respond to the massive tax avoidance highlighted in the Panama Papers. “To illustrate this clash, take the words of UK Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell during the Panama Papers tax haven scandal that “every pound avoided in tax by the super-rich is a pound desperately needed by our National Health Service, our schools and our caring services.” We’d strongly agree with this statement — though Bill Mitchell, a prominent MMT economist, attacked it as a “dangerous and misguided narrative for progressives to engage in,” because it “fuels damaging myths” about how the tax and spending system works”.

An easy and ready dismissal of MMT is that its application would simply result in a repetition of the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic in the early 1920s or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s. However, as Mitchell and Fazi point out there were other factors at play here that triggered hyperinflation most notably disruptions in the supply of goods, not simply the creation of additional money, moreover, they point the example of the creation of additional currency during in Germany between 1933 and 1937, which enabled the Nazi government to rebuild the German economy.

The MMT discussion of the potential risk of inflation, which partly relies on the accurate assertion that creating more money will be no more inflationary than any other stimulus effort such as borrowing more money. They tend to treat the impact of increased money supply in the economy as not just felt via inflationary pressures within a national economy - because most economies are in trade relationships with other economies, changes in volume on money can impact on exchange rates which in turn impacts on trade in those goods being sold internationally will experience a reduction in price on international markets, whilst imported goods will cost more. This can be beneficial to both exporters and manufacturers reliant primarily or exclusively on internal markets - as with the falling value of the currency both become more competitive - if it goes too far it can cause considerable dislocation in the internal economy of a country.

Moreover, if we accept that hyperinflation is a potential problem, even if not primarily driven by the creation of money, then we have to also recognise that MMT’s focus on money as being the solution to modern problems of the economy - particularly where shortages are caused not by a lack of money, but a lack of goods - which we have begun to see during the COVID pandemic due to dramatic shifts in consumption patterns of certain goods, most notably personal protective equipment and vaccines, and as a result of disruption in manufacturing and supply chains due to the virus and accidents such as the blocking of the Suez Canal in March by the Ever Given.

In these circumstances simply creating more money or giving more money to people will not solve these supply issues, indeed it will potentially exacerbate the problems and give rise to Inflation at least in part of, if not the whole of the economy.

While MMT focuses on the ability of governments to simply create money in order to overcome problems with either needing to stimulate the economy or to enable necessary and vital government programmes. These are not the only challenges facing the global economy. Moreover, by articulating an almost evangelical view of having unlocked the secrets of the economy its advocates tend to forget that primarily the issue of spending and consumption in national and international economies are not primarily driven by economics, but instead by politics - with economics being a justifier for political positions.

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This article is posted under copyleft, verbatim copying and distribution of the entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. If you reprint this article please email me at revitalisinglabour@gmail.com to let me know.

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Naked class war will continue post the pandemic, but it is not a break with neoliberalism

Lisbeth Latham 

The current crisis is sparking significant discussion about policy direction for our societies coming out of the pandemic. Zack Brestin’s article is an important contribution to that debate. While I agree that neoliberalism has been demonstrated to be a failed system and that we can expect to see an intensification of naked class warfare, however, I think it is a mistake to believe that we will see a break with neoliberalism is mistaken. What we are likely to see, unless working and oppressed people are able to resist it, is a deepening of the logic of neoliberalism rather than a break with it.

Neoliberalism has been the hegemonic economic and political outlook in the world for more than 40 years. However, defining neoliberalism is extremely difficult. This is for a range of reasons:

• Its proponents largely deny that it actually exists;
• It is so hegemonic that it articulates itself in numerous ways has it has permeated through a range of different political traditions on both the left and the right;
• One of the mechanisms for its hegemonic position is that it subverts and destabilises other outlooks rather than necessarily articulating a consistent position - a primary avenue for this is through what a number of authors have referred to as the neoliberal thought collective.

Having said this there are a number of features that can be associated with neoliberal positions, these include:

• Facilitating the free movement of capital by removing barriers to capital investment and shattering trade barriers;
• Increasing barriers to the movement of workers, which results in increasingly constrained rights and marginalisation for migrant workers;
• Prying open more aspects of social life for capital investment;
• Reduction in government social spending primarily premised on the justification of the need to rein in deficits;
• Increase in subsidisation of capital either directly or indirectly via the opening government services to capitalist competition;

Unfortunately, all indications are that these features will be deepened in the wake of the current crisis, just like they were in response to the Global Financial Crisis, and just as they have been after every crisis of the neoliberal era.

Why is this? I think we have to explore two aspects of neoliberalism, the first is that it is a response to the deep-seated and long-run economic crisis the global capitalist economy caused by the overaccumulation of capital which has resulted in capital finding it increasingly difficult to profitably invest outside of seeking to commodify all aspects of social life, redirect social spending into boosting profits and via the increasing financialisation and securitisation of the economy. However, these responses can only provide short-term relief to the problems that it is trying to address and has the tendency then to exacerbate the underlying crisis because it has both eliminated existing protections against crisis - such as the serious problem caused in the current pandemic by so many workers having little or no effective sick leave, resulting in workers with symptoms faced with the stark choice of attending work sick (and potentially infecting co-workers and by extension their families) - and that it has spread the direct impact of the economic crisis into more and more parts of the economy.

In response to both the failure of neoliberalism to avert crisis and the tendency to exacerbate crisis - while you would expect this to result in the death knell of the orientation, has repeatedly in crisis after crisis in the advocates of neoliberalism successfully enforcing prescriptions of the deepening of neoliberalism in the economy.

While this may seem both counterintuitive and running against the developments in the current crisis - with many advanced capitalist countries seeing government responses that have included the expansion of welfare payments, subsidisation of the payrolls of qualifying companies, and taken over privatised hospitals to meet the needs of responding to the pandemic. The reality is that many of these actions were taken late and begrudgingly, with many of the neoliberal governments which have introduced these frameworks already rolling back these programs despite the crisis being far from over. Neoliberal spokespeople both within and outside of government arguing that post-pandemic recovery will require a deepening of the deregulations of labour markets and privatisation, and the winding back of social spending to pay for the debt built up in responding to the crisis, that is, the shifting of the social cost the crisis onto working people in order to defend and prop up capitalist profits. This push is not inevitable, but resistance by working people in the current period is going to be difficult but as the struggles that are breaking out internationally in response to the crisis, it is possible.

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Buenos Aires Teachers Strike Against Face-to-Face Teaching During COVID Second Wave

Lisbeth Latham

Teachers in public schools across Buenos Aires have been on strike since April 19 following a decision by the city government to oppose a ban on face-to-face learning as part of a national lock-down. Education unions argue that the city’s decision, made in the midst of a new COVID outbreak and despite a federal decree to close schools and transition to remote learning, unnecessarily increases the risk of contracting and spreading the disease.

Since the start of the pandemic, Argentina has been hit hard by the pandemic with almost 3 million people infected and more than 60 thousand deaths. From the outset, there has been ongoing tension between Buenos Aires city government and the federal government over how to respond to the pandemic crisis - with the pro-business Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and his allies opposing policies aimed at limiting the spread of infection but which they, like other neoliberals globally, argued undermined the economy.

In the wake of the new wave of infections, President Fernandez’s government issued a Decree of Necessity and Urgency which included a national lockdown including the closure of schools until the end of April - on April 30 it was extended until May 21. On announcing the extension of the lockdowns and curfews across the country Fernandez said “The measures against the pandemic are strictly to save lives. The rules we put in place must be complied with equally by all". The lockdown is aimed at limiting new infections which were running at record highs particularly amongst those under 18-years of age. The Buenos Aires municipal government responded with a court case to block the decree in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area - however, the court has not yet made a final decision, however, the city government has attempted to keep public schools in the city open. The opposition Juntos por el Cambio coalition within the federal parliament is also expected to launch their own court challenge against the lockdowns.

In response education unions in middle and higher education called strikes beginning April 19, with strikes having been renewed as the government has failed to respond. The strikes which have seen 90% of students and teachers not attend for face-to-face classes have been justified by the unions as necessary public health measures to protect not just students and teachers but of the lives of all those in the metropolitan area. With the Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina (Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic - Ctera) arguing the strikes are a defence of health and life and are necessary as:

• the Buenos Aires health system is close to collapsing because new strains impact children the most.
• the Buenos Aires government didn't condition schools to prevent the spread of the virus.
• children, IF THEY USE public transportation to go to school this increases the risk of contagion.
• Larreta isn't vaccinating teachers and non-teachers to prevent the disease.
• in Uruguay, Britain, Chile, Israel, Italy closed schools to reduce cases and it worked.
• we want to stop coronavirus from taking more lives.

The strain on Argentina’s health care system is reflected by there being more than 5,300 people currently receiving intensive care for coronavirus complications, COVID patients occupying 68.4 per cent of beds available nationally, and 76.6 per cent in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area.

In a statement released on May Day, the Ctera said “with masses of teachers, families and students, we have been fighting against the lies and misleading advertisements with which Larreta intends to continue to use education in a political campaign at the expense of the health and lives of the citizens of the City.

In addition to calling for the municipal government to abide by the closure of schools, the union is also calling for a continuation of the vaccination program, particularly in schools, and for urgent steps to be taken to ensure that all students have access to computers and the internet to allow virtual teaching during the lockdown.

The statement ended “Despite the pressure and the discounts on our salary, we will carry on convinced that our fight saves lives.”

Ctera is part of Union de trabajadores de la educación (Union of Education Workers), one of the Argentinian affiliates of Education International. Ctera has established a Solidarity Fund in Defence of Health and Life to support striking teachers.

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France: Workers and students occupy theatres to demand the reopening of the cultural sector

Protest outside the occupied Odeon Theatre

Lisbeth Latham

On March 4, workers and students within France’s cultural sector began occupying the Theatre Odeon in Paris as part of protests aimed at increasing government support for the sector in the face of the economic impact of the COVID pandemic. Since March 4 the occupations have spread and there are now over theatres across France that have been occupied. The movement is an important development within the French labour movement’s response to the current crisis and follows the central role played by workers at the Paris Opera played during the 2019-2020 movement to defend pensions.

Striking Ballerinas perform Swan Lake December 2019

Like in most countries the COVID pandemic has caused considerable disruption to the French economy. In response to the crisis, the French government has sought to support the wages of workers (albeit those workers who have had their hours reduced only have up to 60% of their incomes protected) and the capacity of companies to survive even if they were no longer able to operate - this has included making available government-backed financing. All aid to business is tied to a restriction on these companies not paying either bonuses or dividends for a period they receive the support.

At the same time as businesses have been supported, France’s cultural sector has been repeatedly ignored and abandoned by the Macron government. While workers have had access to wage subsidies museums and theatres were not initially provided with the same support as other businesses, and despite widespread planning regarding how to safely reopen in the context COVID, have been largely ignored in government planning for reopening following the end of France’s second national lockdown in December, with the exception of bookshops and small private galleries, which have been treated by the government as shops rather than cultural spaces in planning.

This abandonment of France’s cultural sector. Which has been so central to French identity for the past century. Has caused considerable anger in France not just because of the immediate and potential long term impact on the affected spaces, but also the potential weakening for French culture in face of globalising cultural imperialism emanating particularly from the US. With fears that France’s efforts to protect the French language and cultural products, which itself is part of the French imperialist project in francophone countries that remain from France and Belgium’s former colonial empires, and its cultural and economic hegemony over these neo-colonies. While this tension between the maintenance of French identity and its own cultural imperialism means that the process is not unproblematic the destruction of the French cultural sector would be a significant loss to the diversity of cultural production globally and a disaster for the workers within the French cultural sector.

The tensions within this space have been reflected in a number of protests, most notably an impromptu performance by cellist Gautier Capuçon in a supermarket to highlight the difference in restrictions operating in theatres and other spaces as compared to commercial spaces. While these differences can be justified on the basis of what constitutes an “essential service” it also demonstrates significant anger at the abandonment of the cultural sector and its workers.

On March 4 protests were held across France. In Paris, the protests culminated in the occupation of the Odeon Theatre by workers and students, particularly the General Confederation of Labour’s (CGT) cultural worker federations the Syndicat Français des Artistes Interprètes (French Performers Union - CGT-SFA), Fédération nationale des syndicats du spectacle de l'audiovisuel et de l'action culturelle (National Federation of Audiovisual and Cultural Action Unions - CGT-Spectacle) and Syndicat National des Professionnels du Théâtre et des Activités Culturelles (National Union of Theater and Cultural Activities Professionals - SYNPTAC-CGT).

On March 4 protests occurred in France calling for the reopening of Cultural Spaces. In Paris, students entered the Odeon Theatre. Since March 4, the occupation movement has spread, by March 14 occupations had spread to 30 cultural buildings across France.

Map of occupied theatres source:@occupationodeon

In response, Roselyne Bachelat, Minister of Culture, announced that the government announced that it would be making €20 million available to support the cultural sector. However, this package is totally inadequate to meet the challenges facing the sector and is dwarfed by the support provided to companies in other sectors by the government. At the same time, Bachelat has sought to delegitimise the movement, arguing that the occupations posed a physical threat to the buildings - many of which are historic sites.

The CGT-SFA has rejected these claims issuing a statement on March 17 stating:

“Madame Bachelot, we are not rambunctious children whom you can publicly lecture for what you seem to consider to be a whim on our part. We demand a minimum of respect, even though for many months we, performers, workers in the performing arts, have been considered non-essential to the life of the country. Our struggle, far from giving our jobs a bad image, on the contrary, gives us back our dignity.

 

If the actions we are taking disturb you Madame Minister, know that this is precisely the goal we are looking for, and as long as we have not obtained satisfaction with the demands that we are making, we will continue”.

Moreover, the occupations have been supported by the managements of the occupied buildings, an example being David Bobée, director of the Théâtre du Nord in Lille, who reported by Radio France Internationale on March 15, as expressing his “complete and total support to this new mobilisation” which he described and an appeal to “revive the performing arts as quickly as possible”.

The CGT-SFA, SYNPTAC-CGT, CGT-Spectacle and SUD Culture, the cultural worker federation of the Solidaires union confederation, in prosecuting their campaign to reopen cultural buildings not simply by advocating on behalf of cultural workers, but by linking this struggle with the broader efforts in France to opposed attacks by President Macron and the Castex government on the rights of all French workers.

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