Populate the Internationalist Movement: An Anti-imperialist Critique of Malthus and Neo-Malthusianism

[Image: Ints Vikmanis / shutterstock]

By Michael Thomas Kelly

The 2018 documentary Germans in Namibia opens with an interview in which a wealthy, German-descended landowner blames the economic plight of poor Namibians on overpopulation and unchecked breeding. Malthusian “overpopulation” remains a powerful and frequently used shorthand to deflect from the ongoing legacies of genocide, colonialism, and neo-colonialism. In this paper, I argue that Malthus’ thesis on natural scarcity was primarily a normative argument against social welfare and economic equality. Malthus was wrong, then, in an ethical and political sense in that he provides an ideological framework for population control policies that imperialism and racial capitalism pursue by design – and broadly use to cause harm and maintain systems of oppression. I begin by briefly summarizing Malthus’ original thesis and clarifying how Malthus made a political, not predictive, argument against social equality. I show how neo-Malthusianism works as an ideological justification for how capitalism and imperialism generate surplus populations and maintain inequality – highlighting racial, gender, and spatial components. Drawing from neo-Malthusianism’s critics, I present a different theory of population across geographical space based on anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.

In his 1798 Essay on Population, Thomas Malthus put forward a vision of natural scarcity, inevitable class division, and checks on exponential rises in population. Malthus asserted that finite resources and unchecked population growth through procreation – “fixed laws of our nature” (Malthus 1798: 5) – inevitably come into conflict. Barnet and Morse (1963: 52) summarize: “The limits of nature constitute scarcity. The dynamic tendency of population to press continually to the borders of subsistence is the driving force.” The conflict between natural resource scarcity and natural population growth, Malthus argued, must necessarily fall on the poorest members of society: “no possible form of society could prevent the almost constant action of misery upon a great part of mankind, if in a state of inequality, and upon all, if all were equal” (Malthus 1798, 11). Malthus also identified “positive checks” on population growth: “Hunger and famine, infanticide and premature death, war and disease” (Kallis 2019, 14).

Critics of Malthus and his original writings explain how he was consciously making a political intervention against revolutionary or redistributive demands. According to Kallis (2019), Malthus had issued “a rebuttal of revolutionary aspirations” (9) and argued that “revolutionaries would cause more harm than good. Malthus wanted to see the abolition of the Poor Laws—a proto-welfare system that provided free food in the parishes” (12). Malthus’s thesis “was not meant as a prediction” (Kallis 2019: 22) but an argument “for the impossibility of a classless society” (23). Similarly, Harvey (1974: 258) characterizes Malthus’ essay “as a political tract against the utopian socialist-anarchism of Godwin and Condorcet and as an antidote to the hopes for social progress aroused by the French Revolution.” Aside from any logical consistency or merit, the essay’s “class character” (Harvey 1974: 259) is what reveals the political intention and function behind the essay and the ideologies it set forth.

More recent proponents of neo-Malthusianism use Malthus’ ideological groundwork to defend private property, uneven development, and structural racism in the context of climate change. For example, Malthus’ Essay presaged arguments that bourgeois economists later made rejecting “redistribution and welfare in the name of free markets” (Kallis 2019: 19). According to Harvey (1974: 262), “Malthus was, in principle, a defender of private property… Private property arrangements inevitably mean an uneven distribution of income, wealth, and the means of production in society.” Both Kallis (2019) and Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum (2020) highlight the popularity – and danger – of natural limits arguments in modern environmental circles. Kallis (2019: 44-45) describes how some 1970s environmental movements “inherited the logic of Malthus,” basing arguments on the fear and supposed impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet. More recently, Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum (2020: 319) explain: “Influential Western leaders and trend-setters have… argued that climate change can be mitigated by addressing overpopulation.” Highlighting “sharp, uneven geographies,” arguments for “natural scarcity… misdiagnose the causes of climate change, often placing blame on marginalized populations” while doing “little to address the root of the problem” (Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum 2020, 317-318).

Capitalism has a specific use for population – within structurally determined class and social relations – quite apart from the natural limits Malthus invoked to justify inequality. Unlike Malthus, whose theory of population was rooted in human nature and natural scarcity, Marx posited a “law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production” (Harvey 1974, 268). Marx ([1867] 1993: 782-793) argued that an industrial reserve army of labor, or relative surplus population, is necessary under capitalism to discipline the employed working-class and absorb the expansions or contractions of the capitalist market. Relative surplus population is inherent to capitalism and produces poverty and guaranteed unemployment by design: “Marx does not talk about a population problem but a poverty and human exploitation problem. He replaces Malthus’ concept of overpopulation by the concept of a relative surplus population” (Harvey 1974, 269). Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum (2020: 324-325) highlight a contemporary example in which the expansion of palm oil plantations in Colombia had uneven spatial and gendered effects on local populations: “the entry of mitigation projects in the region has resulted in more gender inequality, more dependency of women towards their male partners and their circumscription to domestic spaces” (325). In this case, “natural limits” and “overpopulation” offer no accurate or worthwhile explanation. Instead, this concrete example is better understood as one in which a new plantation market absorbed male wage workers, caused gendered harm in a Global South nation, and showed the limits of climate mitigation in a system in which private property and ownership structures remain intact.

Imperialism and neo-colonialism similarly drive predictable, uneven effects on populations globally, which population control policies and discourses serve to obscure. Harvey (1974: 274) explains: “The overpopulation argument is easily used as a part of an elaborate apologetic through which class, ethnic, or (neo-) colonial repression may be justified.” For example, “several years after Hurricane Katrina, former Louisiana Representative John LaBruzzo… proposed paying people who received state welfare assistance $1,000 to undergo surgical sterilization” (Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum 2020, 320). Also, the US justifies its military presence in Africa through tropes of “overly-reproductive, resource-degrading women” and “the perceived urgency of preemptively addressing climate conflict” (Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum 2020, 321). In both cases, the political function of Malthusianism – that overpopulation will collide with natural resource scarcity – obscures the actual underlying power dynamics. The increased intensity of storms and drought in desert regions are attributable to industrial capital’s emissions of CO2 and play out unevenly across existing racial segregation in the US and neo-colonial underdevelopment in Africa (Rodney [1972] 2018). Global capitalism drives climate apartheid and racialized, gendered poverty, which Malthusians wrongly ascribe to unchecked population and natural limits.

Critiques of Malthus and neo-Malthusianism offer pathways for a different theory of population rooted in principles of anti-imperialism and internationalism. Kallis (2019: 98) locates the following example in terms of limits, but perhaps it is better understood as a struggle over Indigenous sovereignty: “it is the… marginalized who draw limits to stop others from encroaching on their space; think of a community that prevents a multinational corporation from logging its sacred forest.” Relatedly, Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum (2020: 324) explain the gendered aspects of “‘planetary care work’ (Rocheleau 2015), as local communities are largely made responsible for containing and reversing the effects of climate change.” In both cases, ongoing, Indigenous-led efforts to restore relations of stewardship with the world’s land and biodiversity – and overturn existing private property relations and US policy abroad – could better serve oppressed populations. Citing Marx, and critiquing Malthus’ separation of humans and nature, Harvey (1974: 267) suggests that humans can achieve a “unity with nature.” In fact, the “emergence of an abstract nature” in some environmentalist rhetoric implies “the invisibilization of alternative productions of nature and myriad forms of resistance… including localized and feminized experiences of climate change from impoverished and racialized communities in the global south” (Ojeda, Sasser, and Lunstrum 2020, 325). Moving past “human” versus “nature” permits us the necessary nuances, contradictions, and local differences within both non-universal categories of human and nature. Lastly, Kallis (2019: 98) again posits the following demands in terms of limits – minimum wage increase, progressive taxation, working-day reduction – but these are also demands to reduce capital’s essential drive to accumulate, seek profit, and expand. Furthermore, these demands can be strengthened and better contextualized when one considers the working-class’ global dimensions and how relative surplus populations are created and used across various geographical, international, and gendered scales.

Debates over theories of population have important implications for future research and political organizing. Environmental movements can recognize Malthusian arguments as part of a political project against redistribution and revolutionary socialism. Scholars and activists can also grasp how guaranteed unemployment, population control, and ecological damage are attributable to structural, changeable systems of racial capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy – not natural laws. On that principle, organizers can work to build an internationalist movement that understands population, production, and scarcity as socially produced categories that can be placed under forms of collective ownership.

References

Barnett, H.J. and Morse, C. (1963). Scarcity and growth: The economics of natural resource availability. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future, 51-71.

Harvey, D. (1974). Population, resources, and the ideology of science. Economic Geography, 50(3), 256-277.

Kallis, G. (2019). Limits: Why Malthus was wrong and why environmentalists should care. Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press.

Malthus, T. (1798). An essay on the principle of population. London: J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard.

Marx, K. ([1867] 1993). Capitalism Volume 1. London: Penguin.

Ojeda, D., Sasser, J., and Lunstrum, E. (2020). Malthus’s specter and the Anthropocene. Gender Place and Culture, 27(3), 316-332.

Redfish Media. (2018). Germans in Namibia. Redfish Media. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U2g5K8JaJk

Rodney, W. ([1972] 2018). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London, U.K.: Verso.

The Rise and Fall of Trump and What It Means

(PHOTO CREDIT: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

By Youssef Shawky Magdy

After Donald Trump won 2016 elections, many theorizations emerged about the rise of the right in the capitalist West. This was exacerbated by Boris Johnson's victory in Britain, and the vision became clear that there would be a tug of war between a US-British economic and political alliance against Europe under the leadership of Germany.  In addition to the rise of the right-wing movements in many European countries as Germany itself and France (some expected Marie Le Pen would win or that Le Pen will succeed Macron).  But what does the rise of the right mean basically?

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the period of competitive capitalism ended and capitalism has been entering the framework of monopoly capitalism, which was characterized by the close union of financial and industrial capital.  Lenin wrote about that stage, stressing its close connection with imperialism, and we still live in the highest stage of capitalism with the change of imperialism from a national situation to a globalized one.  The question here is when does "fascism" — or what can be called more broadly the "savior right" — rise?

The savior far right rises as a response to a comprehensive social crisis represented by an economic decline in the rate of capitalist profit that cannot be compensated for by "more foreign imperialism"(imperialism against others),  in addition to a political crisis represented by the dissolution of the ruling-class coalition and the collapse of its hegemony.  Besides the ideological crisis represented in the collapse of the principles and myths supporting the status quo. 

This is accompanied by an increase in the pace of progressive movements of a left-wing nature that offer popular and progressive solutions to the crisis, such as fair wages, a fair distribution of the surplus, and an increase in workers' power and authority within productive enterprises. Perhaps the solutions become more revolutionary that try to change the entire social system.

And when those progressive movements fail for subjective (strategic and tactical) and objective reasons, the fascist right rises up as the representative of the bourgeois class, which is in crisis.  So the right tries to fix the situation in favor of monopoly capitalism, but in a populist fashion.  So, the crisis is emptied of its content and the process of displacement is installed, which projects the problem to any demographic or cultural phenomenon, such as projecting the crisis on immigrants, for example.  The right represents the middle class but in a deceitful manner.

And now, after we knew the conditions and aspects of the savior right, are these conditions and appearances fulfilled in the current capitalist West?

Of course, the capitalist West has been going through an economic crisis since the 1990s, and the Iraq war was a temporary attempt to alleviate the crisis, but the opposite happened.  The goal of securing the oil wells was achieved, but the return was serious economic and political losses.  The crisis reached a dangerous stage in 2008, and with Covid-19 crisis, the severity of the crisis increased in several situations. The profit rate reached very low rates.

Regarding the political crisis, the United States has been suffering since the Iraq war from a decline in its hegemony over the world and the consumption of exorbitant resources in its wars, which has led to Trump's tendency to reduce those interventions and limit the intervention only to very necessary situations such as threatening to intervene in Venezuela or Iran.  In Western countries themselves, liberal democratic governmentality suffers from a deep problem represented in the vulgarization of the meaning of democracy and its focus on the representative type only.  The public’s distrust of that governmentality has been increasing.

Regarding the ideological crisis, liberal democratic values ​​are proving their failure day after day, from their forced application on the third world countries within the framework of pushing them towards economic openness (which is failing for various reasons, the most important of which is that these projects are completely unpopular) to the failure of that values in the West to achieve the desired happiness.

In addition to the neoliberal ideology that fuels religious and ethnic conflicts.

As for the signs that indicate the rise of the right, we find that they are available to a large extent; for example, Trump tells us that he is “the president of the peasants and workers!” Right-wing nationalism is spreading again, in addition to anti-immigrantism.  Racist crimes are increasing day by day.

The question here is whom the rising right represents now?

In the pre-globalization era, the right "truly" represented big monopoly capitalism that was still associated with "nation-state". That link was largely structural. So we find that the laws and rules regulating the economy were related to the framework of the nation.  The economic production cycles were deeply related to the state’s economic cycles, such as the payment of salaries, allowances, official holidays..etc. In addition, industrial capitalism prevailed, not financial capitalism.  The first, of course, needs an organization and a specific context in which to work.  In one word, capitalism was capitalist "statism". Consequently, when fascism escalated, it rose in a context that made it easier for it to perform its rescue tasks, and the statism turned into hyper-statism. The bailout has come in a national context to represent monopoly capital of a national character.

But in our time, the era of globalization, capital divorced from the national context; the globalized economic cycle, in all its complexities, has separated from the national context and Financial capital prevailed.  In fact, the crisis of global monopoly capitalism needs a solution of the same size and level of complexity, that is, it needs a global solution.

The savior right cannot provide solutions but national solutions, and thus its representation in that era is limited to capital, which is not so large as to leave the context of the nation-state.  In general, there is a conflict with those small capitalist strata, and the globalization project led by big capitalism, which seizes and controls the market and has relatively little production costs.  The protectionist measures (of all kinds) promoted by the right contradict the globalization project.

Even if an extremist right-wing project succeeds in a western country, it will be overthrown by the global system, as happened in the Second World War as When the right fails to manage the crisis, it turns to violence that is forcefully defeated.

This is how we should understand Trump's rise and fall.  The rise was a response to the crisis but an inadequate response. The new US administration is more homogenous with the world order.  Therefore, it will participate in the global solution to the crisis.

Biden's victory and the defeat of Trump have not signified the success of any progressive coalition, as some liberals think.

Some believed that Trump's rise would result in a counter-left movement, and that did happen with the rise of Bernie Sanders, but that movement was defeated. Ultimately Biden does the same job as Trump, but in a more understanding and rational way.

Yes, the U.S. Response to COVID-19 is a Genocide

[PHOTO CREDIT: Aaron Ontiveroz/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Image]

By Alex Harley

Republished from Emphasis Added.

A Yale epidemiologist was castigated for equating the virus to a genocide in a series of tweets. Why? The answer lies in a foundational understanding of white supremacist capitalism: death for profit isn’t murder.

As hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people living in the U.S. protest racist police violence in all fifty states, another act of racist violence is being perpetrated through governmental policy and business practice: The COVID-19 Genocide.

While scientists agree that the virus itself was a natural, and not lab-created phenomenon, its handling in the US is an unequivocal disaster. As of June 29, 2020, the crises is forty-two times the size of 9/11 casualties: 128,000 deaths. So where are the calls for accountability and justice?

It is not despicable to characterize the U.S. response to COVID-19 a genocide. It is imperative. It is an assertion that clarifies U.S. behavior. Unfortunately, MacLeod’s hesitance to call it genocide is no outlier. It is the default reaction from defenders of the status quo.

One British legal authority agrees that the case for genocide is weak, citing “specific intent” (Heieck, 2020).

But it is no insult to victims of state and vigilante violence to call it genocide. It is the acknowledgement of historical record.

The capitalist ideological foundations of the U.S., and all modern states built on settler-colonialism, do not frame death through exploitation as a crime. It’s the price of doing business. They’ve been in excess of deadly business for over four centuries now, and it hasn’t stopped.

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder.

But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.

- Fredrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England

The (predominantly white) federal government and the (predominantly white) business elites are both guilty of sacrificing working people to profit from and during the COVID-19 crisis. Their (predominantly white) adherents, with their anti-lockdown demos, anti-mask violence, victim blaming, hoax conspiracy theories, and scapegoating of China, are equally culpable.

The rulers of the U.S. do not recognize their own extant record of mass murder: not in illegal military operations; not at the hands of police; not in the workplace; not in the streets. The nation socializes its citizens to normalize systemic murder, successfully. It is a critical piece of settler-colonial ideology. Deception is another key piece.

From “Heroes” to Fodder

Early on in the crisis, front-line workers were heralded for their bravery. They were called “heroes”. But in reality, the fanfare was a just nice way to say “Get back to work!” And this, of course, was reserved for those who weren’t laid off.

Corporations were quick to slash their rosters as soon as the crisis reared its head. The Federal Government acted just as quickly to “bolster the economy” by pouring trillions directly into corporate pockets. Corporations, and especially their rich executives, made out handily.

Between March 18 and April 10, 2020, over 22 million people lost their jobs as the unemployment rate surged toward 15 percent. Over the same three weeks, U.S. billionaire wealth increased by $282 billion, an almost 10 percent gain. (Institute for Policy Studies, 2020)

To secure the fortunes of the wealthy, businesses must stay open, with severely reduced staff (and overhead!). Retail and service employees must relent to exposing themselves to infection by interacting with large, diverse segments of the population. They must take on new duties, including enforcing social distancing measures, which exposes them to violent reaction. Doctors and nurses must work without enough equipment, beds, or sometimes even space. And all the while, protests against police violence must be brutally repressed with the billy club, rubber bullet, sound cannon, and tear gas canister. In some cases, the police have directly targeted children and the elderly. And, the police continue to murder civilians.

The connection between racist policing and racist capitalism must be highlighted. They are thoroughly enmeshed.

COVID-19 in Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups, CDC

Nationally, hospitalizations show a rate 15 times higher for oppressed nation’s peoples as opposed to whites. The statistics of death rates among them are equally disparate (Ford, 2020).

Race gaps in COVID-19 deaths are even bigger than they appear. Brookings.

Reservations have been some of the hardest hit areas in the nation. But instead of aid, the federal government sent body bags to the Seattle Indian Health Board (Grande, 2020).

What is this brazen attitude, if not dripping with intent? The intent is to make money, whatever sacrifice working and oppressed people must make.

How do you characterize a nation which denies its people access to a functional, modern health system by means of predatory business practices and fiscal austerity? And when centuries of racist capitalist underdevelopment magnify the crisis within the oppressed and working class communities of the US?

This is not by accident, but design. Uneven capitalist development and sheer disregard for human life have proven “profitable” time and time again; and, will continue to do so. Theft and murder are profitable. But who are the murderers? Can we see them clearly?

Responsible Parties

The virus is not the main agent; willful, deliberate neglect is; the result of governmental policies and business operations which have identifiable delegates. There are responsible parties. We must not lose sight of that.

Working solutions were and are available to solve this crisis. This is illustrated by the disparity in how effective certain responses have shown to be across the globe. Nations who took the crisis seriously have fared demonstrably better than the US. They mustered human and material capital to create solutions, during the time they bought through strict containment policies.

Instead, the U.S. flouted scientific consensus and advice from other nations. The U.S. eventually locked down, but did nothing substantial with the time bought. All of the states which re-opened under business and right-wing popular pressure have all surged again (Hawkins, 2020). The infection curve should look like a bell by now; instead, it looks like an insurmountable mountain. And until a vaccine is found, it will continue to do so, if the U.S. ruling class continues its regime of denial.

They withheld vital aid through confiscation of protective equipment and economic sanction. They continued high-tech military operations during a global viral outbreak. In May, the U.S blocked a vote in the UN for a global ceasefire (Borger, 2020). The rulers of the U.S. do not seek peace, but war. War with the world’s oppressed people, domestically and abroad. War for profit.

At every turn, American bourgeoisie will try to make money, no matter how insidious it may seem. As reported by Qiao Collective, US corporation Gilead’s vaccine is slated to cost the American public “$3,120 per [patient] with private insurance.” If China finds a vaccine, they will make it a “global public good” (Qiao Collective, Twitter).

While the ruling class can largely isolate themselves in their lavish homes, padded from infection by layers of workers, the crisis outside is just a complication. The deaths of workers are simply inconvenient, when there is a surplus of unemployed laborers from which to draw. Our deaths truly mean nothing to them. If a guardian‘s charge dies by neglect, it is considered murder. What about when a nation allows its subjects to die?

We should consider it murder.

Taken independently, the historical abuses perpetuated by the leaders and ruling class of the United States are reprehensible. When viewed as a singular phenomenon, they amount to genocide. COVID-19 is just another blood-soaked chapter in the American project of unlimited exploitation.

Resistance in the Time of Cholera: Preliminary Notes on Viral Dialectics

By Bryant William Sculos

In Gabriel García Márquez’s classic Love in the Time of Cholera, cholera is both literal and metaphorical. So too is COVID-19. Not the virus itself necessarily (though its complicated emergence and uneven spread and effects surely implicates our current system), but the massive and largely preventable or treatable harms of the virus that have thus far gone largely unprevented and untreated are the metaphor. Not merely a metaphor, of course. Not a metaphor in the sense of being immaterial or unreal. Metaphor in the sense of representing something much more than itself, symbolizing that which is beyond itself.

Metaphor. Representation. Microcosm. Heuristic. Epitome. Choose your label. The key point is that we must pay attention to the important reality that if we focus exclusively on the COVID-19 pandemic from a medical or public health perspective we are going to miss most of what we must learn from and through this crisis. Unlike the bacterial cholera, the viral COVID-19 is not as easily treatable or preventable, though with an eventual vaccine it can become more preventable. Cholera persists for the same systemic reasons why COVID-19 and the flu persist. This is what global capitalism’s demands of sadistic efficiency and perverse profit-seeking produce. What these infections share is their dialectical imbrication within the same system that contains the potential technical means to humanely resolve various harms, but profits off of their continuation.

COVID-19 is only on our radar such as it is because of the inability of our unjust, unequal, irrational, sadistic, and undemocratic political economic system to care for all the people who need and deserve care in this world. It is the match on an accelerant-soaked woodpile. We should be paying attention less to the match and more on the precursory conditions. And this isn’t a suggestion we don’t also pay attention and attempt to organize around the specifics of the harmful effects of COVID-19 and the systemic failures specifically related to the current crisis. To not prioritize these immediate concerns would be ethically unconscionable and politically unsound. People have immediate needs. This is instead a call, as I’ve written before in a different context, to focus on the forest and the trees.

What can resistance look like before we regain the option to gather in public together and protest and lead campaigns for the necessary radical reforms needed in the short-term? What can it look like given that we then must necessarily aim towards the more systemic, revolutionary changes needed to produce a democratic, egalitarian post-capitalist world – a genuinely democratic, socialist world?

Theodor Adorno wrote of the splinter in the eye that becomes a magnifying glass. Who has the splinters in their eyes right now (beyond the everyday splinters that all precarious workers, poor, and oppressed peoples have in their eyes)? The immunocompromised. The elderly. Those without insurance or are underinsured. The otherwise at-risk. The already-infected. Our healthcare workers. Logistics, factory, and warehouse workers.

These people are already facing the tip of the spear. For many, the spear has already pierced the skin. These are the best sites of contestation and struggle at the moment. For those in other industries who are not on the front lines of the current crisis, what can we do? We can prepare for the post-social distancing struggles. We can support those who are in need and in struggle today. And we can engage in a wider array of solidarity-building activities that reach those people who are waking up politically during this pandemic. These are our best tools—and they are tools that are not unique to this crisis.

Right now, basically all forms of conventional public resistance would do more harm than good—perhaps with the exception of strikes (or preferably, strong strike-threats that are more likely than ever to be acceded to without need to resort to an actual work stoppage). It is hard to imagine a more sympathetic group of workers at the moment, with greater power to inspire fundamental systemic change, than our front-line healthcare workers. So long as they are put at disproportionate risk, not wholly different from their pre-pandemic workplace experiences no doubt, they could and should demand the world.

This isn’t just about leveraging this crisis to win previously needed workplace safety reforms and benefit increases though, while “essential workers” have much more power that they have ever had before (or at least experiencing a greater awareness of their latent political-economic power). The fights that were on-going before the crisis remain. In the US, we have immigrants in concentration camps. We have a racialized mass incarceration system. Endless warfare remains endless. Most people are struggling week-to-week to make ends meet, often to no avail. We are also seeing states like Texas and Ohio prohibit abortion procedures under the guise of bans on non-essential medical procedures. Shove a fetus inside one of these wealthy white, straight male GOP lawmakers and see if they don’t think its removal is essential. We need to keep our eyes open and voices loud, however we can.

While there are many aspects of the variable and uneven government responses to stopping the spread of COVID-19 (“flattening the curve” through differentially enforced “social distancing” and “test, track, and trace” approaches) that are absolutely vital to avoiding a more massive death toll than anyone wants to think about; they should not be viewed as permanently inviolable rules that all should follow as long as they’re told. They are also not innocuous, even so long as we are participating. Even a necessary policy is not necessarily wholly virtuous. There are questions of privacy and data-profiteering to be concerned about. While we should always be skeptical of enhancements to the power of the national security state, it does seem like compliance is the lesser evil at the moment. That may change, if things get far worse and governments fail to response adequately and justly. I write this not be produce this outcome sooner. I write it so you will be prepared to think differently about the current public health demands being placed on billions of people around the world. No one must stay home to die when acting publicly can save lives.

That said, people won’t—or shouldn’t—long withstand the demand from the capitalist class and their ideological snake oil salespeople that people go to work and die for the short-term profits of corporations, nor will they stay home and suffer, perhaps to death. At least, I see enough reason to be optimistic that people will not tolerate either of these developments. People have been made—conditioned—to withstand much over many, many decades of capitalist violence and exploitation, suffering irrationally without any sense of what possible alternatives are achievable in practice. While it is possible people will “choose” to suffer more, I have hope that this time things will be different. Either genuine socialist demands are won, or capitalism should not be allowed to be resuscitated. Either the people are resuscitated and healed, made more whole than capitalism ever allowed before, or capitalism should be allowed to die—and a new order built on its ungrievable ashes.

We are in a paradoxical, indeed dialectical, moment (though, within capitalism, when aren’t we?). The response we need to this crisis—the twin-crisis of COVID-19 and capitalism—is organized, collective, mass democratic action. Yet this is precisely what good public health guideline compliance prohibits. Still, we must comply. Compliance today is solidarity. Even if that may change, today it is undeniably true. Stay home. Wash your hands. Use the technologies available to check-in on others. This is what we can do. But the contradictions of organizing within capitalism, the extreme difficulty in getting people to show up and stand out, are not particular to the COVID-19 pandemic. We cannot do what must be done, but too many people weren’t doing what was politically necessary two months ago either. This is something we must reflect on and be honest about. This is not an indictment. It is a call for political growth.

We can use technologies to do some things, but not what is fully-required in this moment. If you’re reading this right now and are thinking, “he is wrong and I have the answer,” please speak up. We need questions and critique as ever before, but we also need answers and alternatives perhaps more than ever before. At least as much as before.

Of course, it is a cruel irony that for many people for whom work is a major time and energy occupier during “normal” times, for whom work is the primary barrier to more fully committed organizing and activist, that these people who have more time to spend on political activities are now required to stay home. I know for many people there is no irony at all; either their work responsibilities have remained unchanged (or increased) or their care and home labor obligations have increased in precise quantity to the amount their waged work requirements have diminished. For many, both sides have increased. This is not a cruel irony. It is, simply, a cruelty.

However, the cruelest irony is that we continue to live in a global society that could, actually quite easily provide for all the basic needs, and possibly beyond, for all people on this planet, and yet we are compelled to live within a system that prevents that from becoming a reality; a system that actively undermines that possibility at nearly every turn.

Postscript

I was wrong several weeks ago when I compared COVID-19 to the flu (though at that time the data was so sketchy and testing so incomplete, the 1% morality rate seemed like an exaggeration. Globally, today the percentage is closer to .5%, which is still roughly five times higher than the flu). When I said what I said, it was not to diminish the suffering or severity of COVID-19, but a somewhat misguided attempt to highlight just how many people die from the flu every year. Compare the typical response and outrage to annual flu death to that of COVID-19, and you would be left with the sad truth that no one fucking cares if people die from the flu, apparently. COVID-19 is both more contagious and deadly, but at some point we should probably have a conversation about why so many people die unnecessarily from the flu….

Bryant William Sculos, Ph.D. is a Visiting Assistant Professor of global politics and theory at Worcester State University and also teaches as an adjunct professor at Florida International University. He is a contributing editor for the Hampton Institute and founding curator of  LeftHooked, a monthly socialist media aggregator and review powered by the Hampton Institute. Bryant is also the Politics of Culture section editor for the open-access journal Class, Race and Corporate Power. He is the co-editor (with Mary Caputi) of Teaching Marx & Critical Theory in the 21st Century (Brill, 2019; Haymarket 2020), and author of “Dialectical Ends and Beginning: Why Barbarism at the End of Capitalism Means Barbarism Beyond Capitalism” in Postcapitalist Futures: Political Economy Beyond Crisis and Hope (eds. Adam Fishwick and Nicholas Kiersey, forthcoming with Pluto Press).

Lifting the Mask of Capitalist Disaster: The Coronavirus Response

By Tariq Khan

Republished from Black Rose/Rosa Negra.

From official disregard and denial to mismanaged response, each day the COVID-19 crisis brings into ever sharpening clarity the hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the current ruling class. Claims of American exceptionalism and greatness are revealed to be a crumbling mask for the systemic rot that pervades. 

One does not have to be a radical to be appalled by the utter depravity of the conservative establishment’s response to the crisis. We watched Republican lawmakers who have tax-funded paid sick leave for themselves vote against a proposal for working-class people to get paid sick leave. Right-wing lawmakers stalled Coronavirus legislation in an attempt to sneak abortion restrictions into the bill. But it is not only conservative leaders that have been exposed as bankrupt, but also establishment liberal centrists. After listening to months of establishment Democrats during primary debates shoot down mild social democratic proposals for universal healthcare and student debt cancellation with the neoliberal mantra “how are you gonna pay for that?,” we saw the Federal Reserve pull $1.5 trillion — enough to wipe out almost all US student loan debt — out of a hat to inject into the stock market just to calm already-wealthy investors. The Coronavirus bill Nancy Pelosi championed as guaranteeing paid sick leave left out 80% of workers, in order to appease business owners. That was only the beginning, as the Trump administration has moved to bail out the wealthy owners of the cruise ship, hotel, airline, oil, and natural gas industries, while not even considering bailing out the many low-income families who are afraid of school closings because schools provide many children with the only meals they get. 

This current global pandemic is an opportunity for the capitalists. They are ever poised to take advantage of public confusion and alienation to dig their tentacles even deeper into the fabric of society. They are already pushing all kinds of for-profit online education schemes on K-12 public schools and higher education – all forms of “economic shock therapy.” The Trump administration is not missing a beat either by maneuvering to funnel $700 billion to the wealthy and cut payroll taxes by weakening social security. Moments like this call for a vocal left applying counter-pressure from below.

Neoliberal logic is that we don’t need the “big government” (a nonsense concept) addressing social and material needs because the private sector, and the all-wise “invisible hand of the market” will take care of it. The Coronavirus exposed that lie in short order. With few exceptions, the private sector has been at best useless for dealing with the crisis and at worst an active obstruction to a humane response. At the local level it is largely the public sector — such as local public school PTAs working with local school districts and public health departments — that has stepped up to meet people’s needs, as ordinary people are organizing mutual aid projects with the resources available to them. Meanwhile the private sector is arguing about why business owners shouldn’t have to pay their employees sick leave.

Disaster Capitalism or Capitalism as Disaster?

In Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine she explores how capitalists use disasters such as earthquakes, floods, wars, famines, epidemics, and so on to push unpopular neoliberal policy changes on societies during the chaos and shock. Klein focuses mainly on the post-WWII period and the rise of what scholars call neoliberalism, especially as represented by economist Milton Friedman and his Chicago school of economics which pushed capitalist “free market” ideology as the answer to the world’s problems even outside the economic sphere.

Black radical political scientist Cedric Robinson, in his earlier classic work Black Marxism, showed that what Klein later called “disaster capitalism” was not a new phenomenon emerging in the post-war global order, but that the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class, was born of disaster: “In the beginning, before they could properly be described as bourgeoisie, these merchants traveled from region to region, their survival a matter of their mobility and their ability to capitalize on the frequent ruptures and breakdowns of the reproduction of populations sunk into the manorial soil.” The social and infrastructural rot, stagnation, and political and economic degradation of European life is what created the bourgeoisie:

“Into this depressed land where few were free of the authority of an intellectually backward and commercially unimaginative ruling class, where famine and epidemics were the natural order of things, and where the sciences of the Ancient World had long been displaced as the basis of intellectual development by theological fables and demonology, appeared the figure to which European social theorists, Liberal and Marxist, attribute the generation of Western civilization: the bourgeoisie.”

In the important work The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, radical historian Gerald Horne explains that not only was the bourgeoisie born of disaster, but that — contrary to both liberal and orthodox Marxist notions that the bourgeoisie was a force of enlightenment that, in the words of Marx, “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life” — the story of the rise of the bourgeoisie is the story not of rescue, but of an apocalypse unleashed on the world: the three horsemen of that apocalypse being the intertwined forces of slavery, white supremacy, and capitalism.

All of this is to say that a term like “disaster capitalism” is redundant. Capitalism was born of disaster, survived on disaster, and spread disaster globally. Capitalism is disaster, and during moments of crisis it extends its reach.

Collective Response to the Crisis

Now is a time to reject capitalist economic shock therapy, and to instead make strong demands for universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal housing, and paid sick leave, as the pandemic makes it clear how all of these things are not “free handouts,” but serve the public interest. In the immediate situation we need free covid-19 testing, a ban on evictions, a rent/mortgage freeze, a moratorium on utility bills and parking fees, and rent/fee-free public housing. Water, electricity, gas, internet, and telecommunications must be treated as public services, not market commodities. There must be free food distribution to vulnerable people who do not have the means or ability to acquire food. Workers who are still required to show up and interact with the public during the pandemic — such as grocery store and drug store workers — should receive hazard pay for the greater risk they are taking on to serve our communities. 

Also in our list of demands should be increased funding to women’s shelters for women and their children who need a safe place to quarantine/social distance. The reality is, social distancing comes with an increase in domestic violence. Further we must demand the abolition of ICE and the release of all people currently detained by ICE/CBP and other immigration authorities, and the phasing out of the prison industrial complex. Prisons and detention centers are public health nightmares during a pandemic and it is nothing short of cruelty to keep people caged without access to the things they need to be healthy.

The three-headed hydra of climate crisis, economic crisis, and public health crisis make it clear that capitalism is an enemy of humanity. Socialism from below is the way forward. Socialize the means of production and expand the public sector.

A Working-Class Response to Trump's 2020 State of the Union Address

The wealthy have taken everything from us, and continue to find ways to take even more. It is never enough for them. And, year after year, their political puppets in both capitalist parties ensure that their rivers and avenues of unfathomable, flowing wealth never dry up or close down. When needed, they construct more. Always at our expense, and always through our collective (and manufactured) misery. The wealthy create or produce nothing of value, barely lift a finger in their daily routines, and get richer and richer directly through our labor, our exploitation, our indebtedness, and our mass dispossession of land and resources. 

Barack Obama was the empire fully clothed, hiding these horrors with impressive displays of eloquence and articulation. Donald Trump is the empire without clothes, naked and with all of its horror on full display. With or without clothes, the horrors exist. With or without clothes, these horrors have disastrous consequences for billions of people worldwide, which are viewed as nothing more than collateral damage sustained through coordinated resource extraction and [disaster] capitalism. For the majority, including most Americans, this reality has existed for centuries. 

This "response" was written an hour before last Tuesday's address because we knew that whatever words would come out of Trump’s mouth would be empty. They are inconsequential to us. They are nothing more than damage control, designed to instill false hopes through the vast wastelands of this country. Just as they were with Obama, both Bushs, Clinton, Reagan, and so on. No matter who stands and delivers this yearly address, the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the bombs never stop falling. The working-class struggle also never ends, and has only become more and more difficult. 

We have had enough. 

Capitalism's predatory onslaught has run its course. America's bourgeois democracy is no longer a suitable cover for a nation that has committed systemic crimes against the global majority, including its own working-class citizens, and especially its indigenous people, its women, its immigrants, and its people of color. From constant war and never-ending exploitation to forced indebtedness and smothering repression, the people no longer believe in this charade. We know that governments in capitalist society are but "committees of the rich to manage the affairs of the capitalist class."

The future does not belong to Presidents, Senators, bankers, executives, hedge-fund manipulators, speculators, investors, financiers, shareholders, cops, landlords, bosses, owners, prison guards, ICE agents, and border patrol agents. It belongs to warehouse workers, carpenters, laborers, bus drivers, teachers, forklift operators, baristas, janitors, restaurant workers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, farmers, prisoners, the unemployed, the homeless, the disenfranchised, and all who have been forced into a hopeless existence only so a small percentage of the population can accumulate more wealth than they know what to do with. 

The empire has been exposed. The "state" and the "union" are myths constructed to hide the class and racial divides that are deeply rooted in the country’s foundation. The American "middle class" was an historical anomaly that will never return, and is only kept alive as a carrot for politicians to dangle in front of us every election season. Capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy are approaching their demise. The fascist tide that has reared its ugly head under late-stage capitalism is already being snuffed out in the streets by courageous, working-class warriors. 

The people are rising, like lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number. The future is ours. And your words, Mr. Trump, mean nothing to us.

All power to the people.

Total Crisis in Egypt: A Marxist Analysis

By Hamid Alizadeh

Sisi came to power in Egypt after millions of people took to the streets to protest over declining living standards and the rising instability and increasingly authoritarian nature of the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi. He came to power promising political stability and the raising of living standards. But far from solving anything, Egypt under Sisi has entered its deepest crisis in decades.

Scratches on the Surface

Sisi's facade as the strong and intelligent military commander has been shattered time and time again as he has hopelessly failed to tackle even the most simple of problems. His violent crackdowns on protests to quash the revolutionary mood has only managed to embitter the masses even more. The random torture, arrest and disappearance of thousands of young people on the pretext of fighting the Muslim Brotherhood has in fact partially served to give a new lease of life to the Islamist organisation.

In the Sinai Peninsula a few hundred Islamists connected to ISIS and with next to no popular support, have been spreading terror and killing scores of civilians and armed personnel. The mighty Egyptian army has pathetically failed to do anything about it. In fact the army is killing more civilians than terrorists with its indiscriminate bombing. This is a completely counterproductive tactic which has only lead to more anger towards the army.

Together, with the rise of ISIS and Islamic fundamentalist groups in Libya, this insurgency is becoming a seriously destabilising factor in Egypt. The illusion that a powerful army could guarantee the safety of the people and act as a stabilising force has been totally undermined and it is clear that the generals are now worried about the morale within the army itself.

Two Left Feet

With regards to foreign policy Sisi has not been any more lucky. The relationship with its long-time US ally had been weakened due to Barack Obama's heavy criticism over Sisi coming to power. However, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states filled in the vacuum left by the US by stepping in with $31 billion worth of aid in the past 3 years. This was the key to initially stabilising the Sisi regime. When it came to paying back the Saudis, however, Sisi could not offer much. First he had to hastily draw back from early promises of support for the kingdom over their war in Yemen. Besides regarding the Houthis as a good buffer against Al-Qaeda and other Islamic Fundamentalist organisations, the Egyptian ruling elite knew that the unwinnable conflict in Yemen - where Egypt has already lost one costly war in modern times - would only lead to further instability. The Egyptian masses have no appetite to send their children to fight and die on behalf of the hated Saudi monarchy.

Then, in April, during a visit by Saudi King Salman, Sisi made the surprise announcement of handing over the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir to Saudi Arabia. This humiliating act of submission to the Al-Saud family caused huge uproar throughout Egypt. Small protests mushroomed all over the country leading to hundreds of arrests and a war of words began between Egyptian and Saudi journalists and TV presenters. In the end, sensing rising tensions, the ruling class had to retreat and a court reversed the decision. Needless to say King Salman was not pleased. The authority of the regime suffered a blow by this affair which also revealed serious fissures within the ruling class.

The Saudi-Egyptian crisis has since then further escalated. The final straw came over the summer as Egypt began a process of rapprochement with Russia . Seeing the relative decline in the role of the US in the region and the rise of Russia, the Sisi regime wants to use the renewed US-Russian conflict to its advantage by using Russia as a means of getting more concessions from the US. Hence the Egyptian navy held its first naval exercise ever with the Russian navy in September followed by other exercises in October. The Egyptian regime has also made several arms purchases from Russia as well as having discussed a possible joint strategy in Libya. All of this was topped by Egypt voting with Russia and against the Saudi/French proposals in the October UN security council meeting which discussed the situation in Aleppo, Syria.

As explained above, the war in Syria and the rise of ISIS and Islamic fundamentalist groups pose a concrete threat to stability in Egypt and the generals are eager to end the crisis as soon as possible. This puts them at odds with a Saudi regime which backs several Islamist proxies in Syria, one of which is ISIS itself. For the Saudis, defeat in Syria poses a serious threat to the future of the kingdom itself. The Saudis demand full loyalty as a minimum return for their financial aid but for Sisi the requests of the al-Saud's could have explosive domestic consequences. The Egyptian "betrayal" at the UN led Saudi Arabia, suddenly and without giving an official reason, to stop the vital supply of refined oil - a part of a $23 billion aid package - to Egypt in October.

A Perfect Storm

The economic shockwave coming from the sudden Saudi aid cut will have a devastating effect on the crisis-ridden Egyptian economy. This in turn will significantly deepen the general crisis of the regime. The decline in the world economy along with Egypt's political instability has driven its economy into a black hole. It was only kept floating just above the surface by the billions of Gulf dollars pouring in each year.

In 2015, investments were half ($14.5 billion) of their 2008 level ($28.5 billion). Foreign investments have collapsed from $13.5 billion to $6.5 billion in the same period. Due to the crisis, it is estimated that the state will be about $15 billion short of funds each year in the coming years. During the 2011-15 period, Egypt has seen an average yearly budget deficit of nearly 12 percent of GDP. In 2015 the public debt reached over 88 percent of GDP, and is projected to reach 94 percent this year.

The government has tried to establish many spectacular projects to find a way out of the crisis. An $8.2 billion dollar expansion of the Suez canal was supposed to double annual revenue from the canal to $13.2 billion a year, but in the context of declining world trade this is impossible. After blocking public canal revenue reports for a period, the August and September reports showed a 10% decrease (!) in canal revenue. Hence the bill for the expansion will be added to the debt of the near bankrupt state. This failure doesn't hold the government back from starting the pharaonic project of building a new Capital city outside of Cairo, the first phase of which will cost over $45 billion. Rest assured the workers and the poor of Cairo will not be the main beneficiaries of the new developments.

Declining Living Standards

The situation of the masses is deteriorating very fast. Official inflation has been floating at 15 percent this year, but will rise higher after the recent devaluation of the currency. Official unemployment levels remains around 13 percent, up from 11 percent in 2011, however just like then the real figure now is certainly higher. Just to remain at these levels, the economy must grow by 5-6 percent per year, yet since the 2011 revolution yearly growth has been just 2 percent, with the exception of 4 percent growth in 2015. Official poverty rates have also been steadily rising up to 27.8 percent in 2015 - the highest rate in 15 years and 2.5 percent higher than in 2010/2011. This year poverty is expected to grow at a far higher rate.

A new IMF "aid" package - with many strings attached - worth more than $12 billion is only worsening the conditions. The IMF is pushing for massive liberalisation and the cutting of the few benefits the Egyptian masses had. In August, electricity prices were raised by 20-40% under a five-year programme that will see power subsidies gradually eliminated. Petrol subsidies are next on the line.

A civil service "reform" will also attack the conditions of the six million people employed by the state and the 20 million who are dependent on public service employment as a source of income. Sisi was the man of the state apparatus with its armed forces of men and the army of bureaucrats, representing all those who felt robbed of their power by the revolution and who felt threatened by a Muslim Brotherhood government which wanted to take its own part of this gigantic network of patronage. It is amongst these layers that Sisi's strongest support is found and a consistent pressure to reduce its size and impose austerity will leave a serious mark on the regime. The debate about these "reforms" in parliament has revealed serious divisions within the regime. While a layer is pushing for liberalisation and attacks on living standards, another layer understands that these attacks could lead to a severe backlash. Yet within the confines of Egyptian capitalism, there is no other solution.

Already the regime has tried to sustain stability by spending vast foreign currency reserves to keep the Egyptian pound artificially high in relation to the dollar. In the context of a decline in the real economy the costs needed to keep the pound up have become even bigger, leading to an acute foreign currency crisis. By the end of October sugar started running out. While the authorities blamed mismanagement, it is clear that the sugar crisis was linked to the low dollar reserves. Sugar prices rose 100 percent. The fear of a spreading crisis led to rising prices on staple commodities while many less crucial products disappeared altogether from the shelves. This was clearly unsustainable. Pushed by the IMF the government had to let the currency float freely on the markets on 3rd November. This immediately resulted in a 50 percent devaluation of the Egyptian pound. Within hours fuel prices shot up 50 percent and other prices are expected to rise.

Anger and Desperation

A mood of anger and dissent is now present amongst the masses. In October a 30-year-old taxi driver named Ashraf Mohammed Shaheen, furious at the government and rising prices, set himself on fire in front of an army office in Alexandria. The news spread quickly on social media with hashtags (In Arabic) of #Bouazizi_Egypt, referring to the street vendor whose suicide sparked the Tunisian revolution.

A video of a Tuk Tuk driver spread like wildfire and became the topic of discussions throughout the country. In the video (Which is well worth watching in full below!) the angry driver sums up the situation very sharply:

"How [can] a state that has a parliament, security and military institutions, ministries of interior and foreign affairs, and 20 [other] ministries end up like this? You watch Egypt on television and it's like Vienna; you go out on the street and it's like Somalia. Before the presidential elections, we had enough sugar and we would export rice. What happened? The top echelon spent 25 million pounds to celebrate, while the poor cannot find a kilogram of rice (…) The government keeps saying that Egypt is witnessing a renaissance, and it collects money for valueless national projects while our education is deteriorating like never before,"

When the journalist asks him where he graduated he replies "I'm a graduate of a Tuk Tuk."

He then goes on:

"How come such large national projects are constructed while we have starving, uneducated human beings whose health is deteriorating. There are three ways for the country to develop, and they are education, health and agriculture. Is this Egypt which gave Britain loans in the past, was the second country in the world to construct railways and whose cash reserves were the biggest in the world? How could we end up like this? Chad, Sudan and Saudi Arabia were part of Egypt, and now a bunch of Gulf countries make fun of us? Those dealers have tricked people under slogans of patriotism, freedom and social justice. Their promises are as far as they could get from democracy and justice. Enough is enough."

The video was quickly removed from the webpages of Al Hayat and the media outlet even started clamping down on independently uploaded Youtube videos of the interview. In the mass media a barrage of accusations ensued against the Tuk Tuk driver, linking him with the Muslim Brotherhood. But this only enraged people even more with thousands of people coming to the man's defence. One woman uploaded a strong defiant video (See below) saying: "Oh president of the Arab Republic of Egypt, you are scared of us that much? (...) because the guy came out and said 'I want to eat and I want to drink?!'".

Another poor man from the rural Upper Egypt posted a video saying:

"This president is an employee like any other…we are tired…we have lost our breath…you want to leave peacefully leave, if not we will force you. (...) We will go on 11/11 ready to die (...) Our revolution demanded justice, freedom and bread and we've got none of it."

After years of almost uninterrupted mobilisations and struggles, the revolutionary movement has ebbed and flowed in the past two years. Tired of the lack of change and disoriented by the rise of the Sisi regime, a certain tiredness crept in. Yet the pressures mounting on the living standards are pushing the masses back onto the arena of struggle once more. In the city of Port Said thousands of people took to the streets (See video below) on 18 October to protest against the rise of rent, shouting slogans such as "house us or kill us" and "we want our rights".

The Ruling Class is Afraid

A whistleblower within the intelligence agency spoke to Middle East Eye about a serious concern amongst the ruling class of an explosive situation developing. The website writes:

"A high-ranking person within al-Mukhabarat al-Amma (General Intelligence Directorate), the country's top security service, told Middle East Eye that reports sent to the presidency late last month highlighted a sharp decrease in both the popularity of the leadership and public support for the state.

(...)

" 'An upheaval is feared in places where there is no awareness of the economic efforts the country is making and where basic services are zero,' he said. He added that dissent, in the form of small angry gatherings, could also suddenly emerge if services promised by the government abruptly ceased.

" 'Look, for example, what happened in Port Said last month or at baby formula distribution branches [in August],' he said."

"In October, thousands of Port Said residents took to the streets, condemning a sudden rise in housing costs. The previous month, dozens of families gathered in front of state-owned pharmaceutical companies to protest against a shortage of subsidised baby formula. The official suggested that these protesters were driven not by political motives but by the sudden end to benefits they had enjoyed."

As is often the case, the bourgeoisie, due to their overview on society come to similar conclusions to the Marxists - albeit from a different class angle. An explosive situation is developing amongst the masses which could burst out into a new stage of open struggle against the regime. Sisi came to power by posing as the defender of the revolution. He promised to solve the economic crisis, to bring stability and to represent the masses. But at each turn he has failed miserably. Far from that, he is now leading the most violent onslaught against living standards in modern Egyptian history. At the root of his problems is the crisis of capitalism which is in turn exacerbated by the parasitic nature of the Egyptian ruling class. With the decline of the economy any attempt to keep living standards afloat will lead to higher debt and a bigger backlash in the future. The IMF package promotes a "cold turkey" cure of getting rid of the debt by slashing subsidies and public employment. But this will only hit demand, thereby dragging the market further down and any end to the vicious debt circle further away.

The ruling class is not blind to the consequences of this. The mood of anger and desperation in the population has seriously alarmed the authorities. The Sisi regime is a counter-revolutionary regime, yet due to its weakness it could have only come to power by pretending to represent the revolutionary masses. The tiredness and relative demoralisation amongst the masses gave Sisi a bit more room to manoeuvre. Yet he has never been able to inflict a decisive defeat on the revolutionary masses. In fact Sisi's first government administration, led by Hazem Al-Beblawi, collapsed under the pressure of a strike wave involving hundreds of thousands of workers. The ruling clique are very keen to crush any mass movements which disrupt the political and economic equilibrium. Yet they have not been strong enough to take such a decisive step. In fact the base of the regime itself has been wavering.

Capitalist Egypt is in a deep crisis. The ruling class is staggering from one disaster to another. It has lost much authority, even amongst its own traditional supporters. Pushed by the attacks on their living standards the masses are being forced to take to the path of struggle again. Yet the main problem remains the lack of a revolutionary leadership to galvanise the movement and lead it to its logical conclusion: the overthrow of the capitalist system.

This was originally published at In Defence of Marxism.