"And the sack of covidiots was ready".by Mathias Bröckers
[This article published on Sept 22, 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=65111.]
The "new normality" must not be questioned, criticism of the Corona measures is blasphemy. From the point of view of the journalist Mathias Bröckers, dealing with the critics of the corona politics has something of a religious struggle. When asked: "Do you want total protection against infection", the answer would probably be "many thousand times yes", says Bröckers. In the NachDenkSeiten interview, the best-selling author gives an insight into how he perceives the discussion about the restriction of basic rights and says what he thinks about the demos against the Corona measures. According to Bröckers, the fundamental rights interventions "must be adapted to the threat situation and in my opinion this has not been the case since May at the latest. From Marcus Klöckner.
NachDenkSeiten has published numerous articles worth reading about the figures mentioned in the interview and the media coverage ...
Covid-19 - pleasingly undramatic data does not justify dramatic interventions
Covid-19 - a Europe-wide comparison of figures shows how unfounded and manipulative the current alarmism is
What was going on in Berlin on Saturday? If you rely on reports and comments of our main media and politicians, you get a wrong picture
Corona demo, Nawalny, War and Peace: The Underground State of German Media
Mr. Bröckers, the demonstrations against the Corona measures were repeatedly the subject of media coverage. But can one actually still speak of "reporting"?
They were discredited before they even took place. That begins with the term "Corona deniers", which in Germany has a particularly defamatory sound in the connotation of "Holocaust deniers", and then there are "conspiracy theorists" - since 9/11 the No. 1 discourse club - and the sack of "covidiots" was ready to be beaten. When surprisingly large masses of people demonstrated in Berlin on August 1, the media spasmodically reduced the number of people to a few thousand in order to be able to dismiss the whole thing as an event by a few extremists. But then on August 29th there were many more...
When the media reports on the demos, one gets the impression that only conspiracy theorists, nutcases and right-wingers would take part. What is your observation?
Many sections of society were represented at the demo. All age groups, salary levels, world views - which is actually logical if the demo is directed against emergency measures that restrict the basic rights of all citizens.
Critics keep saying that the demos are "open to the right". How does that fit together, when there is more or less a cross-section of society on the streets?
In left-wing and liberal circles, "open to the right" is just a buzzword. I cannot share this view. The protest movement would then be "open to the right" if its demands were aimed at "the right". But they are not, unless one considers the insistence on the rights and freedoms guaranteed in the German constitution to be "right", just as much as the demand to adapt the pandemic regulations to the real threat situation. And not, as is still the case, exponential extrapolations, which turned out to be completely wrong already in spring.
There was the event at the Reichstag, on which the media pounced. How did you perceive this "storming of the Reichstag"?
This Reichstag mosquito was inflated to a Nazi elephant, as the aerial photos of that day make abundantly clear. A few dozen in front of the small stage at the Reichstag, hundreds of thousands at the rally at the Großer Stern or on the way there. But these few get the attention of the world press, which can simply fade out the elephant in the government district, the peaceful mass protests against the emergency decrees. Or - because their size was simply immense - they put them in a sack with the Nazi staging, which could then be beaten up wonderfully. To the point that the question why actually hundreds of thousands take to the streets and whether or to what extent their demands and concerns are justified, did not even have to be asked.
What is behind all this?
A production: A dubious right-wing association is allowed a stage directly at the Reichstag building (applicant: the ex-NPDler Rüdiger Hoffmann with a criminal record) and three policemen are placed at the western entrance - despite a massive police presence everywhere in the area. Then a crazy Q-Anon chick screams into the microphone that Donald Trump has declared freedom, that the policemen have laid down their weapons and that you should now occupy the stairs of the Reichstag - and you have the pictures that dominate the reporting. That the lateral thinking demo had absolutely nothing to do with this right-wing splinter group is then no longer worth mentioning.
Very early on there was talk of a "new normality". In March, Federal President FrankWalter Steinmeier said: "The most important thing first: we will defeat the virus. But in what kind of society we will live afterwards, and in what kind of world, depends on how we act today". To emphasize it again: Steinmeier says: "In what kind of world we will live afterwards. That sounds pretty grim, doesn't it?
The "New Normals" are already on the road everywhere. Since May the corona haunting is actually over, the overall mortality rate is lower despite Covid than in previous years
without Covid, the intensive care units have hardly anything to do with Covid patients. In most European countries the situation is similar: Deaths have almost disappeared from the corona statistics, and this despite "increasing new infections". One could easily come to the conclusion that the risk of these "infections" is rather low and ask the question whether emergency ordinances and legal restrictions are still appropriate. But even such questions are pure blasphemy among the "Witnesses of Corona" missioned by nationwide panic orchestras; the new normality does not tolerate any deviations and if they were still being preached in the Sports Palace, "Do you want total protection against infection?
Solidarity and unity in the "war against the virus" are a must, whoever sheers out is guilty of disrupting the military and puts human lives at risk. Even the large demonstration on August 1 did not lead to overcrowding in the hospitals or even the cemeteries, nor did the demonstration on August 29, but the Berlin Senate is not fooling itself into ordering compulsory masks for future demonstrations against the masked ball.
What do you think about the encroachments on fundamental rights, which have been going on for quite some time now?
As some experts in constitutional law have already noted, these are not compatible with the constitution. They have to be adapted to the endangering situation and in my opinion this is no longer the case since May at the latest. Since then, only "rising infections" are being presented as a danger and their development is being reported like the stock market prices - but the PCR tests used do not measure any "disease" at all, but only recognize a DNA snippet that is assigned to the Sars-Cov2 virus. The tests definitely say nothing about whether someone is ill and whether they can infect others, but they do form the basis for quarantine regulations and other massive fundamental rights interventions. This is in no way legally tenable or justifiable and must be permanently reviewed as an emergency ordinance. And by parliament.
Cover picture: Screenshot "The missing part" via YouTube
Reading tip: Bröckers; Mathias: Freedom for Julian Assange - Don't Kill The Messenger! Westend Publishing House. July 2019. 8,50 Euro.
Left demands on emergency policy
Halina Wawzyniak and Udo Wolf on the claims of left civil rights politics in times of need
[This article published in Sept 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Artikel/15-20_OnlPubl_Linke_Anforderungen.pdf.]
HALINA WAWZYNIAK was a member of the German Bundestag from 2009 to 2017 and from 2013 to 2017 she was the legal policy spokesperson for the Left Party's parliamentary group in the Bundestag. UDO WOLF has been a member of the parliamentary group DIE LINKE. in the Berlin House of Representatives since 2001 and
is a member of the right and sports committees. From 2009 to June 2020 he was the parliamentary group chairman.IMPRINT ONLINE-Publication 15/2020is published by the Rosa Luxemburg FoundationV. i. S. d. P.: Alrun Kaune-NüßleinFranz-Mehring-Platz 1 - 10243 Berlin - www.rosalux.de ISSN 2567-1235 - Editorial deadline: September 2020Editor: TEXT-ARBEIT, BerlinLayout/Satz: MediaService GmbH Druck und Kommunikation
CONTENTS1 Introduction 42 Basic principles 53 Defending civil rights and liberties for their own sake 64 Services of general interest and distributive justice - core tasks of the state from a left-wing perspective 75 Securing democratic control 96 The principle of proportionality cannot be overturned 97 Keeping an eye on society - looking at the consequences of measures 118 Social security is evident 129 Making economic activity urgently sustainable 1410 Concluding remarks 15
4HALINA WAWZYNIAK AND UDO WOLFLINKE REQUIREMENTS FOR EMERGENCY POLICY(First
of all, the authors are themselves dissatisfied with the term emergency policy used in the article. The term reminds too much of emergency and emergency legislation. We now want exactly the opposite of emergency legislation. We want an understanding about the claims of left civil rights politics in emergency situations such as catastrophes. In the absence of an alternative we use this term nevertheless :-) 1INTRODUCTIONThe Corona Pandemic continues. It is instructive to look at the way politics reacts to the pandemic - just as the radicalization of the critics of the protective measures can be observed. With the first infections and the images from Bergamo, Italy, in March 2020, a media race for the most stringent containment regulations and restrictions of basic rights and freedoms began, culminating in a lockdown. Politicians followed this media race and embarked on a logic of intensification without waiting for the results of less intervention-intensive measures. With the decline in the number of infections and the experience that the health care system is not overburdened with the treatment of infected persons in Germany, a media race for the fastest loosening up began again in July 2020 - once again, politics followed this logic without the inconsistency of the measures taken being explained by those politically responsible or becoming the subject of discussion. Parallel to this, the first major protests against infection control measures such as the wearing of a mouth and nose protector in April and May 2020 - often initiated by very heterogeneous alliances, including Reich citizens, Nazis, anti-Semites, and anti-vaccinationists - developed. The demonstration on 29 August 2020 in Berlin showed that this protest has now been largely taken over by Nazis. The protection of basic rights and freedoms is being advanced here to pursue all kinds of other agendas. In left-wing circles, but also in society as a whole, a basic attitude has become widespread in which critical questions about the fact-based nature of the measures or demands for the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms, in particular the principle of proportionality, quickly became denounceable and were actually denounced. This represents an immense danger for leftist and civil rights-oriented politics. Since the end of the summer vacations, the return of many vacationers* and the intensification of the tests, the infection numbers have been rising again. This is again accompanied by a media arms race for the most absurd restriction measures, which politics partly follows. One might think of the demand for alcohol prohibitions or curfew
hours. The latest measures basically repeat the process of the first wave of measures to prevent the spread of the corona virus. The social left, like the party DIE LINKE, has been paralyzed since the beginning of these conflicts. In its ranks there are deniers of the corona virus or the dangers it poses, as well as "panics of reason "1 and people who even in the crisis made use of a capability that actually distinguishes the left: to ask questions. Asking questions is something different than questioning the existence of a virus. To ask questions means to question. Karl Marx already knew: "De omnibus dubitandum." (There is doubt about everything.)2 At a time when scientific knowledge about the spread, danger and effectiveness of protective measures against the virus is updated almost daily and therefore political measures must also be adapted, it makes sense to ask questions. Not least because it is a central task of the left in the Corona crisis to think the big lines together: health protection, social security including state precautions and protection of basic rights and freedoms. One of the demands made by virologist Christian Drosten to the state authorities at the beginning of the pandemic was to examine every measure to see what undesirable effects and side effects it might have in other areas of society. He himself has pointed out several times that measures that seem sensible from a virological point of view to contain the pandemic are necessary. Lobo, Sascha: Corona-Gesellschaft: Wider die Vernunftpanik. Column, in: Der Spiegel, 18.3.2020, at: www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/corona-gesellschaft-wider-die-vernunftpanikkolumne-a-772e1651-f393-4bc6-8f79-79dc7a5ed025.2 Marx, Karl: Bekenntnisse, in: Marx, Karl/Engels, Friedrich: Werke [MEW], Vol. 31, Berlin 1965, p. 597.
5men, can have devastating sociopolitical and economic effects. He therefore advocated the establishment of interdisciplinary advisory committees that would weigh up the measures to avoid making decisions with dangerously minimal motivation. Catastrophes, whether natural disasters or epidemics, must not be viewed one-dimensionally from a left-wing perspective. Left-wing politics takes all social conditions and relationships into account. And it acts within these conditions. This applies all the more in times of catastrophe. Such an approach must now be developed by the left. For the Corona pandemic will not be the last emergency that politics has to deal with. There may be a second or third wave of corona, but the next wave may be a socially self-inflicted emergency, for example due to a lack of drinking water or a drought. What has long been reality in the poor countries of the global South may soon happen in the rich countries of the global North. Climate change can become very concrete. 2PROPRIETARY This prospect that such catastrophic large-scale emergencies will continue to accompany us forces a left-wing civil rights party or even a socialist civil rights party that works towards ecological, social and economic sustainability to think about what, in its view, a preparation for emergency policies can look like and what basic requirements such emergency policies must meet. The fundamental question of the constitution of a society and the understanding of the state are at stake. The starting point for the present considerations is that the state should neither be organized as a guardian nor be a fully comprehensive state. One of the important lessons from the failed attempt at socialism is that the state should protect its citizens from crime, hardship and injustice, but at the same time citizens should also be protected from unjustified state intervention in their personal lives. The state must not regulate the lives of its citizens down to the last detail,
but above all it must not face all kinds of penalties for non-compliance with rules. It must always maintain the proportionality of measures and protect fundamental rights and freedoms as values in themselves. The core idea of a democratic state is to use enlightenment to promote insight and understanding so that standards of solidarity can be developed together. The state must create the conditions for everyone to participate in such a process, it must create conditions for people to be able to exercise their rights, but at the same time it must not take over the exercise of the rights of individuals. In short, a left-wing understanding of the state is based on negative freedom in the sense of defending against state intervention in basic rights and freedoms and on positive freedom in the sense of enabling participation. To illustrate this with an example from Berlin politics that is foreign to Corona: The state can create a law to ensure adequate housing. It can impose fines for disregarding the law, but it cannot solve the concrete financial dispute between the parties to the lease for them. It can, however, create regulations that enable tenants to exercise their rights, and it should do so. Here the crucial difference to classical liberalism becomes clear. While the latter also rejects state intervention in contractual freedom, a socialist civil rights policy is characterized by the fact that it considers contractual freedom to be restrictable by state measures - namely, when an approximate "equality of arms" can be established between the parties to the contract, thus implementing the actual idea behind contractual freedom. The concept of freedom used by neo-liberals denies the state any interference in economic action and ownership of means of production; indeed, even simple regulations are dismissed as infernal. This, of course, has nothing to do with the goal of an association of free and equal people, in which the free development of each individual is the condition for the free development of all members of society.3 With regard to basic rights and freedoms and their perception and exercise by the individual, a socialist civil rights policy fights to ensure that their comprehensive perception is not restricted by economic or social status. Thus, when social problems, crises, pandemics or natural disasters make drastic executive measures appear necessary, their necessity must be justified. As left-wing citizens-3 Cf. Marx, Karl/Engels, Friedrich: Manifesto of the Communist Party, in: MEW, Vol. 4, Berlin 1977, p. 482: "In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms, there is an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Trump - a battered leader
"I'm a cheerleader for this country and I don't want people to be afraid.by Joachim Bischoff
[This article publishedon 9/10/2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.sozialismus.de/kommentare_analysen/detail/artikel/ich-bin-ein-cheerleaderfuer-dieses-land-und-will-nicht-dass-die-leute-sich-aengstigen/.]
At the beginning of the year, US President Donald Trump deliberately downplayed the corona virus to prevent a panic. This was reported by CNN and the "Washington Post" with reference to interviews that star journalist Bob Woodward conducted with him in February and March.
Less than two months before the presidential election, Woodward published a book ("Rage") with highly explosive statements: Trump had already admitted in conversation with him at the end of the winter that he knew how dangerous the corona virus is - and that he deliberately withheld this knowledge from the public.
According to the statements published in advance, the president was therefore aware of the dangers of infection from the pandemic. This would be transmitted by air, he is quoted in an interview on February 7, "it is also more deadly than even a strong flu. On 19 March he is said to have said: "I always wanted to play it down. I still prefer to play it down because I don't want to cause panic." During this time, however, he publicly referred to low case numbers in the USA and claimed several times that the virus would disappear on its own.
Trump's corona policy has provoked harsh criticism. So far, more than 190,000 people who tested positive for the corona virus have died in the USA. Trump's challenger Joe Biden of the Democrats accuses the president of having reacted too weakly and too slowly to the spread of the virus. The latter, on the other hand, is defending his course: "We have done well in every respect," he said at a White House event, adding, "I am a cheerleader for this country. I love our country and I don't want people to be afraid."
It is rare that investigative books become a political burden or a drastic intervention in public debate. Bob Woodward, a professional investigative journalist, has obviously succeeded in doing what many other publications on the dubious character of President Donald Trumps have not done before: Revelations that could shock, put the president in a shady light again, and cause him considerable political damage.
At the center of Woodward's report is a political leader who is not up to his social function, a president whose defense minister considers him dangerous and unfit for the presidency. Most recently, his predecessor Barack Obama had emphasized his destructive potential for democratic culture in the UA (see the article "Don't let them take democracy away from you" on Sozialismus.deAktuell of August 22, 2020).
Trump's only goal is power and his re-election, for her sake he literally walks over dead bodies. Although he is already aware of the danger posed by the virus at the beginning of February, he plays it down so as not to endanger his re-election. Instead of taking action, he polemicizes against warnings, although the number of dead is rising and rising. Instead of educating the American population despite the undeniable uncertainty in scientific research and taking measures to fight the pandemic, the president is lying to the citizens.
Why did Trump give this series of 18 interviews with Woodward between December 2019 and July 2020? Not even his shocked campaign staff has an answer. But the tape recordings on which Trump plays down the pandemic against his better judgment do exist. When his spokeswoman Kaylie McEnany is asked about them by reporters, she replies that Trump has never lied to the American people, but only wanted to avoid a panic. However, the tape recordings of Woodward Trump's standard lie refute that he never said what is claimed here and there or in this and that book.
Will Woodward's enlightening report open the eyes of indecisive American voters and move them not to allow the president another term in office in November? His still powerful supporters will hardly be shaken in their political stance by this revelation. Nevertheless, the revelations could make some others in the suburbs suspicious that there is an incompetent president at the controls of the American government machinery, who is not concerned with the welfare of the citizens but above all with his own political fate.
Some journalists discuss whether Woodward's actions are morally responsible. Others accuse him of only now going public with Trump's statements so that his book will sell better a few weeks before the election. The journalist contradicts these accusations and says that Trump tells things that did not stand up to scrutiny. That's why he asked himself the same question he had asked as a reporter for the Washington Post on Richard Nixon's Watergate affair: "What did he know and when did he know it?
Trump had already made the statements now published in winter, but as a reporter he had to check whether this was actually true. It took him until May to do this. When he also found out that Trump had based his interview statements about the virus on reliable information, the pandemic had already spread throughout the USA: "If I had told the story then about what he knew in February, it would not have told us anything we didn't already know. The matter had already ceased to be a public health issue and had become a political issue. That is why he had concentrated on getting his book published before the election date.
In February, he first approached Trump about the virus and he explained, "This is deadly stuff ... you just breathe the air and that's how it transmits. That's clever, that's tricky. It's also more deadly than even our severe flu." In March, he would have admitted to Woodward that he had deliberately minimized the danger.
Joe Biden accuses Trump of "almost criminal" behavior in the Corona crisis. He told CNN in an interview published in excerpts that this was "despicable". While the president
knew of the real danger posed by the virus, he himself did not put on a mask. Biden continued: "It was about making sure that the stock market didn't go down, that his rich friends didn't lose money. Trump surrendered to the virus, "he didn't do anything... that's why we don't have confidence in his leadership.
Trump again defended his conduct on Fox News, arguing that he had imposed an early ban on travelers from China and the EU, which saved many lives, and praised his government's crisis management: "We have done an incredible job.
As important as the revelation book by the well-known star reporter Woodward may be, the decision on a second term of office depends on the one hand on the further progress of the crisis in the US economy, and thus on unemployment and the significant decline in private household incomes. On the other hand, it will probably be crucial whether Trump succeeds, as he did in 2016, in countering the "lie press" and other media with their "fake news" via the social media, which is also a question of his election campaign budget.
Trump has replaced his former campaign manager and "digital guru", Brad Parscale, four months before the election date. In his place is Bill Stepien, previously vice-president of the election campaign and a long-time Trump confidant. This decision is also related to the fact that polls see the current US president 15 percentage points behind Biden for the first time - the largest gap in the entire year.
Particularly in the most fiercely contested "Swing States", Trump is in some cases behind the Democratic challenger with double-digit figures. Nevertheless, the president remains confident of victory and on Twitter he emphasizes the importance of "Secret Votes"possible votes from people who do not express themselves in polls and would still vote for him on election day.
Another background to Parscale's dismissal is that especially at the beginning of the hot election campaign phase the financing of Trump's campaign is "weakening". Of the $1.1 billion that Trump and the Republican Party raised in the first half of the year, 800 million has already been spent - mainly on television advertising, well-paid staff for the campaign apparatus and the nomination conference.
Now, in competition with the Democratic and Joe Biden's campaign coffers, less money has to be spent. After the financial problems of his campaign were reported, Trump explained that he would use money from his private assets for his re-election if necessary: "I would do that if I had to, but we are in a very good position. His team currently has "much more money" available than four years ago.
And because of the Corona pandemic, he himself had to spend money on advertising earlier than planned "to counteract misinformation". "Whatever it takes, we have to win ... This is the most important election in the history of our country," he said and flew to campaign appearances in the states of Florida and North Carolina.
Donald Trump: A new emperor of the lumpen proletariat?
by Clyde W. Barrow[This article published on 9/8/2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.sozialismus.de/kommentare_analysen/detail/artikel/ein-neuer-kaiser-deslumpenproletariats/.]
US President Donald Trump is the "prince of the lumpen proletariat". That is a central thesis in my new book. It is the question that will be asked on November 3 and far beyond: Does Donald Trump crown himself "emperor of the lumpen proletariat"?
This term is taken from Karl Marx' writing "Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte" (1852; in: Marx-Engels-Werke [MEW], Vol. 8: 111ff.), where he applies it to Louis Bonaparte Napoleon III. I contend that Trump follows the script of the 18th Brumaire-the story of the extraordinary rise of a lumpen proletariat organized and led by an authoritarian populist.
Marx described Louis Bonaparte as an authoritarian dictator, "who constitutes himself as the head of the lumpen proletariat, who finds here alone, in mass form, the interests he pursues personally, who recognizes in this sputum, apostasy, removal of all classes the only class on which he can necessarily rely. He "becomes ... the victim of his own world view, the serious buffoon who no longer takes world history as a comedy, but his comedy as world history. (LEV 8: 161)[1]
In his foreword to the second edition of the 18th Brumaire (1869), Marx noted that the purpose of his book would have been to demonstrate "how the class struggle in France created circumstances and conditions that allow a mediocre and grotesque personage to play the heroic role. (MEW 8: 560) It is no coincidence that on the cover of the weekly magazine Time, June 8, 2018, a Donald Trump is pictured looking at his reflection and seeing a king there. The New York Daily News of July 4, 2018, portrays Trump as "the clown who plays the king". The language used to describe the Trump administration as a theatrical but dangerous "clown show" performed on a world stage is remarkably similar to Marx's description of Louis Bonaparte in 18th Brumaire.
The longing for greatness - one more time
In the 18th Brumaire, Marx reports on the defection of the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie after the February Revolution of 1848, for although they were "working classes," they were also small owners. With their commitment to private property, during the insurrection of the following June they were suspicious of the industrial proletariat's more radical demands for a social republic. These classes were not only threatened by the proletariat's "socialist" demands; they were also nostalgic for an older capitalism based on small producers and small farmers who had flocked to the armies of Emperor
Napoleon I-a dictator who had once made France great for them. As Marx noted, the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie longed to make France great again.
In the 18th Brumaire, Marx also traced numerous factions of the bourgeoisie that were divided in their preferred response to the revolutionary proletariat and also in their commitment to the Republic. The bourgeoisie, as Marx defined it, included big landowners (real estate owners), the financial aristocracy (bankers), big industrialists and the higher professions-high army officers, university professors, priests, lawyers and the press. The division of interests within the bourgeoisie and the nostalgic longings of the peasants and petty bourgeoisie formed the basis for the election of Louis Bonaparte as President of the Second Republic in December 1848.
However, because of the low level of support in the French National Assembly and the prospect of having to resign because of a probable defeat in the 1854 elections, Louis Bonaparte staged a coup d'état on December 2, 1851. He relied on army officers, who led the Mobile Guards and then the secret society of December 10, and on the financial aristocracy's connivance.
Bonaparte had won his election with the support of the financial aristocracy and the votes of the rural and urban petty bourgeoisie, who were impressed by his promise to lower their taxes and make France great again. Bonaparte's coup was ultimately based on the mass support and violence of the lumpen proletariat.
Marx and Engels did not consider the lumpen proletariat capable of independent political action because of its dependent position on the margins of capitalism. When the lumpen proletariat became politically active, it was often because it was organized in the political arena by other classes. As a rule, the lumpen proletariat was led into the class struggle by the ruling class as a counterweight to the numerically superior proletariat. The ruling class usually recruits the lumpen proletariat as a "bribed tool of reactionary intrigue" by enlisting it in counterrevolutionary militias and special police forces directed against the working class. A uniform, a fixed salary, medical care, a pension and a weapon are an appealing "bribe" for someone whose "living conditions" offer no prospects for the future.
When Louis Bonaparte was elected President of the Second Republic, he initially relied on the Mobile Guard, the military arm of the Provisional Republican Government. Bonaparte disbanded the Mobile Guard and replaced it with a secret society called the "Society of December 10" - the Decembrists - organized by military officers to ensure the election of Louis Napoleon as President of the French Republic on December 10, 1848. Marx describes the origin of the Mobile Guards (and later the Decembrists) as follows:
"They belonged largely to the lumpen proletariat, [which in all large cities forms a mass exactly distinct from the industrial proletariat], a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living off the wastes of society, people without a particular branch of work, prowlers, people without homes and social recognition, varying according to the
level of education of the nation to which they belong, never denying the lazzaroni character"[2].
Bonaparte's coup was made possible by the armed support of the lumpen proletariat and tolerated by the financial aristocracy for as long as the latter was allowed to plunder the treasury with growing national debt and corrupt financial schemes-"the smallest racket" carried out openly in public, while the petty bourgeoisie is literally put into a narcotic coma with the promise of making the nation great again. Similarly, Trump promises to return the United States to its traditional (if mythical) way of life - white men doing good work in mines and factories, intact nuclear families, Protestant religious values, and a destiny-driven destination.
There is nothing new about the reactionary and nostalgic desires of the American petty bourgeoisie, which has always suffered from what Richard Hofstadter called status anxiety when it was oppressed by the economic power of corporate and financial capital and the demands of a proletariat for higher wages and more public services (e.g., universal health care, free higher education). What is new in the United States, however, is the rise of a white lumpen proletariat, similarly moved today by nostalgic-masculine images of a time when American men mined iron ore, oil, copper, coal and bauxite on American soil, built cars sold worldwide and military and civil aircraft that dominated the world skies.
Some political economists still call this class a deindustrialized proletariat, but the problem with the latter term is that these "masses" are no longer a proletariat and never will be in their lives. They have fallen into the ranks of the lumpen proletariat and have become, as Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, "the 'dangerous class', the social scum, the passively rotting mass, cast out by the lowest strata of the old society, which can be swept into the movement here and there by a proletarian revolution; but their living conditions prepare them far more for the role of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue"[3].
Under President Donald Trump, there has been a massive expansion of special police forces of the federal police with paramilitary capabilities, and they are deeply loyal to the president. Instead of Bonaparte's Mobile Guards, we now have the armed forces of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs & Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).[4] The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 165 armed militia groups in the United States, including the "Oath Keepers" and the "3 Percenters," and this list does not include many ordinary thugs like the "Patriot Prayers" and the "Proud Boys. Donald Trump has an army of ragtag proletarian shock troops that he can activate on "December 2" to rise from prince to emperor. President Trump has long boasted that his own security team is "robust" in dealing with those who oppose him, and he encourages local police authorities not to be concerned with ensuring the physical integrity of people when arresting them.[5]
Meanwhile, demonstrators are kidnapped in unmarked vehicles by the President's mobile guards, the "jump-out boys" of the Homeland Security Department's HSI force, which
operates in civilian clothing without a national insignia. 6] President Trump calls armed neo-Nazis, fascists and white racists "fine people," and he indicates that a civil war is imminent by claiming: "I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump - I have the hard guys. They are not playing the hard guys yet - only after a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad"[7].
This is the script of the 18th Brumaire. This is the head of the lumpen proletariat who joyfully declares, "I love the poorly educated!"[8] But from the standpoint of class analysis, it is important to recognize, therefore, that the mere act of removing Donald Trump from office as president will not reverse the underlying logic of post-industrial capitalist development that led to the rise of an angry and violent white lumpen proletariat. Donald Trump did not cause the white lumpen proletariat, although his words and actions have mobilized and unleashed it in a variety of radical right-wing, neo-Nazi, fascist and white nationalist organizations, including armed militias, which are likely to become even more active if Trump is denied the presidency.
The emergence of a white lumpen proletariat is the result of a long-term process of class formation that has produced an army of counterrevolutionary shock troops that will not disappear in an election. The lumpen proletariat is armed and dangerous, and thus the question will remain regardless of the outcome of the November 2020 elections: What to do with the white lumpen proletariat? If the impression should have arisen whether "The Dangerous Class" is a pessimistic book: Yes, it is, and it has no happy end - at least not in the foreseeable future.
Clyde W. Barrow is Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He has published widely, most notably in the journal New Political Science. Recent books: Toward a Critical Theory of States. The Poulantzas-Miliband Debate After Globalization (SUNY Press, 2016) and The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat (University of Michigan Press, 2020, forthcoming). The article documented here first appeared under the title Donald Trump: A New Emperor of the Lumpenproletariat? on August 30, 2020 in The Bullet, a blog of the Social Project (SP) in Canada. Translation: Hinrich Kuhls.
Notes
1] In his letter to Engels of October 12, 1853, Marx speaks of Louis Bonaparte as the "lumpenproletarian emperor" (MEW 28: 303).
2] Karl Marx: The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850, MEW 7: 26th emphasis on the author. Cowling correctly concludes in his article Can Marxism Make Sense of Crime (Global Discourse, Vol. 2 (2011), Issue 2, p. 59) that Marx and Engels "associated crimes with the lumpen proletariat," but only insofar as it is a "recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds"; they do not conceive of the lumpen proletariat as a whole as a criminal underclass. In the "Class Struggles..." Marx also noted: "The financial aristocracy, in both its means of acquisition and its pleasures, is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpen proletariat at the heights of bourgeois society. (MEW 7: 15) - note]
3] Translation of the passage as quoted by the author. The text in the English translation by Samuel Moore (1888) authorized by Engels reads: "The 'dangerous class', the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. (quoted from The Communist Manifesto. A Modern Edition with an Introduction by Eric Hobsbawm, London 1998: verso, p. 48). In his book "The Armies of Europe", Engels speaks of "the so-called 'dangerous classes'" in connection with French military and recruitment law (MEW 11: 419). The text of this passage in the Communist Party Manifesto: "The lumpen proletariat, this passive rottenness of the lowest strata of old society, will be thrown into the movement in places by a proletarian revolution; its whole life situation will be more willing to be bought into reactionary machinations. (MEW 4: 472).
4] Mitchell Ferman; Manny Fernandez: In the Rio Grande Valley, the Border Patrol is the 'Go-To' Job, New York Times, April 14, 2019.
5] Philip Bump: Trump's Speech Encouraging Police to Be 'Rough', Annotated, The Washington Post, July 28, 2017.
[6] Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg: Think Federal Cops in Portland are Scary? Cops Use 'Jump Out Boys' All the Time, Guardian, July 29, 2020.
7] David Jackson: Donald Trump Stirs Controversy with Breitbart Interview About His 'Tough' Supporters, USA Today, March 15, 2019.
8] Dylan Stableford, Donald Trump: I Love the Poorly Educated, 24.2.2016, YahooNews.com; Maya Oppenheim: Jared Kushner 'Admitted Donald Trump Lies to His Base Because He Thinks They're Stupid', The Independent, 31.5.2017.
"The left and the police - friend or foe? The underfunding of the police is a myth
by David Ulmen[This article published in 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.marx21.de/david-ulmen-geld-fuer-hilfe-statt-fuer-polizei/.]
"The federal government and some states have for years reduced the police force to death in personnel and equipment because of their fetish for the black zero. At least that's what Dietmar Bartsch thinks. But the underfunding of the police is a myth.
Contrary to what is often claimed, the police have not been reduced to death, but have even been upgraded. In recent years, state governments have increased the budget of the police everywhere. The staff has been greatly increased. Whereas in 2012 there were just under 243,000 police officers in Germany, by 2016 there were already almost 265,000. More police and more equipment
With the higher budget, however, they have not only hired more police officers. Above all, they also financed expensive, partly military equipment. Just think of the pictures from Hamburg, where police officers with machine guns and military combat gear were
deployed at the G20 protests. The protests in the Hambach Forest also showed how quickly a massive police force can be organized when it comes to asserting the interests of corporations.
Combating the causes of crime
The myth of underfunding serves conservative forces to constantly demand more money and thus further arm the repressive apparatus. The left should not participate in spreading this lie.
Instead of pumping more money into the police, more support is needed for the actually underfinanced social workers and for prevention work. It is important to address the social causes of crime instead of strengthening the repressive apparatus.
In the USA, thousands protest against racist police violence. And what is the Left's attitude to the police in Germany? The marx21 readers' debate on the question: "The Left and the police - friend or foe?
The movement under the slogan "Black Lives Matter" enjoys great sympathy among leftists. But while in the USA the abolition of the police is already being discussed, leftwing faction leader Dietmar Bartsch backed it in June. Are racism and violence only characteristics of US police officers? Or is there a fundamental problem with the institution? Do the officials need more support? Or should the left propose alternative concepts of security? We want to discuss these and other questions with you in the coming weeks on marx21.de
Corona: "School opening yes, but only with health concept! Trade Union / International / September 2, 2020
[These British interviews published on 9/2/2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.marx21.de/corona-schuloeffnung-ja-aber-nur-mitgesundheitskonzept/.]
School opening despite Corona - a topic all over the world. How a British teachers' union succeeded in involving thousands of shop stewards in the fight for health protection in times of pandemic
At the height of the pandemic, you launched a nationwide organizing campaign against a hasty reopening of British schools. Unusual. What prompted you to do this?
John Hegerty: The problem was that the British government was incredibly reckless with the crisis at the time. When it became increasingly clear that this crisis would reach lifethreatening proportions, only arbitrary measures by the government followed. The way schools were handled was correspondingly irresponsible: first they were closed in a hurry at the height of the pandemic, and immediately after Easter there was already talk of reopening them. However, there was no discussion of urgently needed protection
concepts for the schools. Our response to this was clear: without appropriate health protection, a reopening would be disastrous. Because we cannot expect anything from this government, we are in demand ourselves. Thus began our nationwide campaign for a safe opening of schools and against the government's failure in health policy.
In view of the extremely stressful situation of parents - keyword homeschooling - isn't it rather delicate to argue for the continued closure of schools?
John: Yes, we had to be very careful. They tried to corner us with arguments like "You don't want the schools to reopen"; or "The children will suffer if they don't go to school". Our union was even attacked on television. It was therefore important that we communicated two things at the same time: "We need to open schools quickly, but this can only be done if the health of teachers, students and the surrounding community is guaranteed". Accordingly, it was important that we not only focused our campaign on the schools, but also on the parents and the community. This is not just about the safety of our members, but about the safety of the entire neighborhood. This address was successful: the government was not given any tailwind for its course. The people stood behind us. We rarely experience this level of popular support.
Campaign for safe school opening
Jacinta Phillips: Basically, the crisis has even led us to expand our relationships with local parents and our contact with the wider community. Our trusted advisors can now build on these connections. This is incredibly valuable for other campaigns.
John: For a good relationship with parents, it was very important that we as a union produced materials and instructions for homeschooling. Contrary to the common myth that schools did not do enough during the crisis, we made sure that most of our members were able to teach their students in home schooling. Statistics show that less than five percent of our eight million children have received no learning materials at all.
It's not easy to organize broad support for a union campaign, especially in these conditions. What was your key message?
John: Our Executive Committee is happy to remind our members that there are people who are alive today only thanks to the work of our trusted leaders. That is a remarkable thing for a union leadership. We were able to say to the activists at school, "You saved lives". That strengthens people, and I believe it is true.
How did the Johnson government respond to your resistance?
John: When the government realized that we were against the plans to open the school, they launched a series of attacks on us, including personal attacks, including in the newspapers. You would expect that a government that goes against a union would do so in an organized and efficient way, but it did not. They really did not know what they were doing. We were well organized, while the government was a mess! So we decided the conflict for us. The schools were only opened when it was justifiable in terms of health protection.
What exactly did your campaign for safe school opening look like?
John: The central tool of our campaign was a checklist of five criteria. The principle was simple: no school should be allowed to open its doors until it has met these criteria. It was based on the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Education, which included spatial distance, the maximum number of students* in a classroom, and also how to deal with staff* at risk.
Union representatives on site
These health and safety guidelines enabled our local representatives to independently assess the risk of reopening the store. On this basis, they were able to talk to the school management and, above all, make clear what measures were necessary to ensure that the school could be reopened safely.
How can you imagine this checklist?
Jacinta: We had a printed version of the checklist, with which each member could carry out the evaluation directly in the school. We also developed a digital app so that the checklist could be accessed via smartphone. At the same time, the digital version allowed us to check the status of the campaign nationwide. In this way we were able to identify schools where there were no shop stewards, i.e. no union representatives. In this case, we asked volunteer colleagues to fill out the checklist. In the end, thousands responded to our call. This was also because the checklist enabled the active members to communicate their concerns clearly and comprehensibly to the neighborhood: If these criteria are not met, the opening of a school is not responsible, not for the teachers, not for the students and not for the neighborhood itself. As a result, our campaign was never just a campaign for the schools, but was about the safety of the entire community. Our approach was very activating and inclusive: for the union activists who could fight for the safety of the schools in a self-determined way and for the community who supported the struggle of our members out of their own interest.
That sounds like a lot of work...
John: Working with the app was by no means everything. We've organized thousands of video conferences and meetings using Zoom. It wasn't just about working with the checklist, but also about introducing new trusted people to the campaign work. In some video conferences we also discussed the situation at individual schools in more detail
How could you get such a campaign up and running so quickly? Nobody expected the pandemic and school closures at the beginning of the year.
John: The most important thing is that the recent successes and strength of our union did not just come out of nowhere. They are the reward for many years of active grassroots work. Many members who played an active role in the campaign had attended our training sessions in advance. So we were able to fall back on an existing structure, on a common attitude. Most of the colleagues* were in the starting blocks to network with others and get started together.
How exactly did you build this strength?
John: To understand it, you have to know the context: Over the last twenty years there have been two developments that have changed working conditions in British schools and fragmented the education system. This has caused us to reorient our work. Since the 1980s, teachers* have lost their right to collective bargaining as a result of a series of neoliberal educational reforms. In 2010, the conservative government expanded the Academies Program, transferring state-funded schools, which had previously been the responsibility of local authorities, to private foundations and companies. This also means that salaries vary from school to school.
Organization in the workplace
Phillips: Previously we had national collective bargaining, so we were able to negotiate with government and local authorities. To continue to counter the neoliberal restructuring of the school system, we decided to focus more on organizing our grassroots members in the workplace, rather than just negotiating at the state or local level. So we started to recruit local shop stewards and tried to build local groups and networks. The strength we gained through this was crucial for our successful handling of the crisis.
What exactly was the advantage of a strong membership base during the crisis?
Jacinta: In schools, many decisions had to be made quickly. If we knew that a school was likely to close, we had to clarify a lot of things in a tight timeframe: Which children and staff* would be able to continue to attend school? Who would have to stay at home?
Thanks to our active membership structures that we have built up over the past ten years, we were able to react quickly. From the very first day, our members were involved in the discussions on site and remained so in the following weeks.
John: So when the pressure to reopen the schools increased, we were able to draw on a network of trusted advisors at many schools and support the teachers directly at their workplace. We now have around 13 thousand shop stewards in 25 thousand schools, which is almost half of all schools nationwide.
20 thousand members attended one of your nationwide zoom conferences. How did you manage that?
John: We gave everything: We e-mailed our members two or three times a week and set up a telephone system where all members could call and ask questions. Hundreds of our staff* and activists hung up on the phones. We tried to call every single trusted person and eventually talked to three and a half thousand of them. And only then did we start holding zoom meetings.
Organizing instead of substitution
Jacinta: It was also important that we were there immediately after the lockdown. We created a platform where people could discuss what was coming up. This met with a great response: people who were afraid of self-isolation were able to connect with each other and with us. Ironically, during the time of isolation, more people participated in the virtual meetings than before, at all levels, whether at work or in the district. And then
there were nationwide meetings, which were getting bigger and bigger - because people appreciated the community and were able to participate directly in decision-making. So they were involved at all levels.
Let's take a step back and look at the big picture to paint a more general picture of your experience: What is the difference between your approach to organizing and the traditional methods of many unions?
John: I would describe it as the difference between proxy and organizing. It used to be like this: you pay your dues and get a benefit in return. But organizing is about understanding where the real power lies. It is about shifting power from the full-time workers to the union members. That is where the real strength of a union lies. The most important thing is to strengthen the membership base at the workplace by recruiting, training and supporting shop stewards. Our job is to train people to effectively lead the process "from below": Members take the leadership role.
Based on your experience, do you have any concrete tips for other organizers?
John: First of all: Be courageous! We have dared a lot and it was worth it. We did not hold back, we made clear demands. And the other thing is: Do not be afraid of failure. It is worth trying things, even if they go wrong. That is the only way to learn what works.
Stronger by fighting to open schools
Jacinta: At every point in time, in every interaction with our members, one question is central to us: How can what we do strengthen and empower our members? No matter what the task at hand. That's why the trainings for new activists are so important. The shifting of power resources "down" is of course also connected with fear - not necessarily because people want to keep power in other places, but because they doubt the organizational ability of workers. They believe their jobs and daily lives are already stressful enough. But where does the strength of a trade union come from? From the company group itself, from the members, from the solidarity of the colleagues.
John, I remember you once said, "If everything is going back to normal, we have to be stronger". What did you mean by that?
John: At members meetings and training programs I always say: "If your school leadership was fair in this fight and proved you right, ask yourself: What can we fight for next when we return to school in September? Against performance-based pay? For a reduced workload? If you feel ready for it - then go ahead". And if the dialogue with the school management was difficult and you had to fight, then realize that you have gained power as a group. All the activists* have seen their power grow in recent months. They can now say: "We can close our school and make it safer - we can win. We have won thousands of victories in thousands of schools and now we say: "Don't lose momentum, keep fighting. What should the education system actually look like? How can we make the schools better? Do you want to tell and teach a different story of this world, as Black Live Matter makes it strong? If so, then do it. Be aware of your own strength!"
Interview partner:
Jacinta and John are active in Organizing For Power (O4P), an international training program that brings together trade unionists, organizers and organizing groups from around the world. Under the direction of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and union activist and organizer Jane McAlevey, O4P has trained around 5,000 organizers from 60 countries since 2019 on key issues of organizing methods. Their book "Keine halben Sachen" (No Shortcuts) has been translated by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and published by VSA-Verlag.
In September the third lecture series will start, organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in cooperation with Jane McAlevey and organizers from all over the world. This time it bears the title "Strike School".
The interview first appeared in the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's magazine "LuXemburg