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7/26/2021 Book Review: Daniel Bensaïd- The Dispossessed: Karl Marx’s Debates on Wood Theft and the Right of the Poor. Reviewed By: Michael PrincipeRead Now In this rather unusual volume edited by Robert Nichols, we find his translations of Bensaïd’s 2007 title essay, as well as new translations of Marx’s five 1842 Die Rheinische Zeitung articles on wood theft, from which Bensaïd draws. Nichols also provides a substantial introduction in which he calls this collection an ‘experiment’ representing ‘a deliberately asynchronic juxtaposition.’ Nichols’ thesis is that the pieces by Bensaïd and Marx each perform an analogous function for their respective temporal and spatial contexts. In an important sense, although his introduction takes up less than a third of the volume, this text belongs more to Nichols than to Bensaïd or Marx. Specifically, he reads the two principle parts of the collection through a conceptual lens which he regards as crucial for understanding our own time, which he calls the ‘crisis of kleptocracy’ (viii). In addition to providing his own commentary on these texts, Nichols provides a helpful, though brief, overview of Bensaïd’s life and works emphasizing both the connection of theory to practice as well as Bensaïd’s evolution over time. Nichols observes that Bensaïd’s essay arrives on the cusp of the great recession and should be understood as contributing to a cluster of analyses that attempt to conceptualize the events which proceed it, as well as corporate and state responses to it, including trillions of dollars of public funds spent to bail out private banks. Nichols notes that the transfer of public resources to private hands was theorized in a number of related ways, including the ‘primitive accumulation of capital,’ ‘enclosures of the commons,’ or David Harvey’s ‘privatization’ and/or ‘accumulation by dispossession’. As Nichols describes it, ‘each of these frameworks expresses a desire to find a theoretical vocabulary appropriate for naming the enduring (albeit uneven and punctuated) logics of capital accumulation via the coercive seizure of public goods and assets, as distinct from accumulation via the regularized exploitation of waged labor’ (x). Considering the pairing of texts by Bensaïd and Marx, Nichols reflects on the former’s late interest in Walter Benjamin, particularly the latter’s rejection of linear history. Bensaïd emphasizes the revolutionary dimension of Benjamin’s messianic thinking. History is at every moment open to interruption, to the arrival of a revolutionary event. Nichols’ collection partakes deeply of this Benjaminian sensibility, perhaps even more than he indicates in his introductory essay. For Benjamin, by rearranging historical narratives, unseen possibilities and hidden truths can emerge. Nichols hopes that this volume does more than ‘retrieve’ the writings of Bensaïd and Marx for our time, but instead helps set the stage for contemporary interventions. In his essay, Bensaïd returns to Marx’s wood theft articles in order to explore both contemporary and possible future dispossessions. What comes to be called wood theft emerges from a period of rural poverty where items such as berries, material necessary for the production of brushes, brooms, fishing rods, material for home repair, basket weaving and food for livestock, i.e. the objects ‘without which life itself could not be secured’, become contested. In this context, the Prussian state intervenes to resolve the conflict between rights of property and customary rights (9). Bensaïd notes that Marx’s critique is in part aimed at the ontology of private property employed by parliament, whose only unifying concept is what serves the interest of the property owner. Hybrid or uncertain property is abolished to the detriment of the rights of the poor and their access to the common property offered by nature. On Bensaïd’s reading, Marx’s approach is that of internal criticism, in which he uses the logic of property against the expansion of ownership rights. If an owner claims property rights over trees because they grow on his land or over timber which is transformed by labor, a consistent application of these principles would grant rights to the poor to gather fallen branches. If even this is theft, Marx writes, ‘[b]y regarding all attacks on property as instances of theft without distinction or further determination, would not all private property be theft?’ (11). Marx is here attracted to Proudhon’s What is Property? and will remain so up through the writing of The Holy Family. Marx also criticizes parliament’s empowering private property owners to enforce and punish wood theft. These punishments included fines paid directly to the owners as well as forced labor. Bensaïd points out that for Marx, this represents public functions being taken over by the private sphere. Marx writes, ‘[t]he wood possesses the remarkable character such that as soon as it is stolen it secures for its owner state qualities it did not previously possess. […] The wood thief has robbed the forest owner of wood, but the forest owner has used the wood thief to steal the state itself’ (25). Bensaïd interestingly connects these articles to other of Marx’s writings. The loss of traditional rights of the poor, excluding them from all property, Bensaïd states, resembles Marx’s famous formulation in ‘Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ where he first introduces the proletariat, ‘a class with radical chains, a class of bourgeois civil society that is not a class of bourgeois civil society, an estate the dissolution of which would be the dissolution of all social estates’ (14). Though unmentioned by Bensaïd, Marx does not connect this early notion of the proletariat to commodity production and the particularities of profit making under capital, which will serve to distinguish the categories of the poor and the proletariat later on. Importantly, we see in both Marx and Bensaïd that two concepts require attention in this context: ‘dispossession’ and ‘the dispossessed’. As Nichols points out, though Bensaïd’s essay bears the latter title, his focus is on dispossession. We will return to the former concept shortly. In mapping the history of dispossession both historically and conceptually, Bensaïd pays close attention both to Proudhon and Marx’s criticisms of him in The Poverty of Philosophy, where he derides Proudhon’s notion of fair exchange and fair wage as ahistorical, abstract and moralistic. Marx’s analysis of the commodity form found in Capital is key. As Bensaïd puts it, social relations are not between individual and individual but ‘between worker and capitalist, farmer and landowner, and so on’ (34). Bensaïd then moves into the twenty-first century with discussions of the privatization of knowledge, the privatization of life (the interpretation of gene sequences) and the possible privatization of everything needed for life and the existence of society. He writes, ‘[i]n this period of market globalization and widespread privatization of the world, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood are of troubling relevance.’ Privatization pushes into all domains of life. Bensaïd refers to education, information, laws, money, knowledge and violence – ‘in short, public space as a whole’ (37). Throughout this discussion, Bensaïd repeatedly matches Marx’s wit and insight. Consider: ‘could one go so far as to patent mathematical equations and subject them to property rights? The socialization of intellectual work begins with the practice of language, which is obviously a common good of humanity that cannot be appropriated’ (43). Reflecting on the operative logic of our times, Bensaïd writes further: ‘If computer science is a language, and if its innovations are patentable, can neologisms of everyday language become so? Concepts? Theories? To what unprecedented neuroses could this compulsion for intellectual property lead?’ (45). These contemporary ‘enclosures’ are, for Bensaïd, direct obstacles to human growth and wellbeing or, in other words, they are contradictions of capital. Furthermore, he states the ‘ecological crisis has put back on the agenda the idea of inappropriable common goods of humanity’ (47). Water, he notes, is an obvious example with various international bodies declaring water to be a human right. Returning now to the question of those who are dispossessed, Bensaïd briefly brings forward what amount to questions of the revolutionary or collective political subject. He states that ‘we are witnessing new forms of resistance of the dispossessed – those “without” (without documents, homes, shelter, employment, or rights) – in the name of the defense of public services, in the name of the energy and food sovereignty of countries subject to imperialist looting, in the name of common goods (e.g., water, land, air, life) coveted by cannibalistic companies or pharmaceutical firms on the lookout for new patentable molecules’ (48). Bensaïd’s linking of the category of ‘the poor’ with Marx’s conceptualization of ‘the proletariat’ noted earlier highlights this issue. Importantly, two different categories are operative here, though Bensaïd does not distinguish them in this essay. The dispossessed or those who are ‘without’ is clearly a different category than laborers subject to exploitation through the wage relation. Nichols reads Bensaid’s essay as highlighting the political importance of the former category, claiming that Bensaid’s ‘energy and acumen drive us forward into a future in which the struggle will increasingly be led by “dispossessed”’ (xxii). This is clearly different from the struggle being led by those who are subject to exploitation at the point of production. Nichols argues for the importance of dispossession as a distinctive category of capitalist violence, not reducible to exploitation, nor simply a necessary condition of exploitation. He asks, ‘[w]hen your body is not even wanted as a tool of exploitation, what leverage do you have over the machinery of power?’ The answer is yet to be determined. The concluding sentence of Bensaïd’s essay fittingly points at both elements of capitalist violence, first to exploitation, then to dispossession: ‘Our lives are worth more than their profits: “Rise up, dispossessed of the world!”’ (57). Bensaïd’s essay, as contextualized in this volume by Nichols, successfully pushes, especially those of a Marxist orientation, to make the idea of dispossession more central to their theoretical and practical work. With regard to Die Rheinische Zeitung articles contained in the volume, they are worth reading or rereading. Marx’s biting analogies and critical, sarcastic style as found throughout his works is in full display here. For example, he writes, ‘[w]e are only surprised that the forest owner is not allowed to heat his stove with the wood thieves’ (94). Finally, Nichols’ translation is a slightly modernized, slightly more readable version of the English translation by Clemens Palme Dutt, though much of the translation is identical. 23 July 2021 AuthorMichael Principe is Professor of Philosophy at Middle Tennessee State University and Middle Tennessee Chapter Vice-President for United Campus Workers-Communication Workers of America (Local 3865). This article was republished from Marx & Philosophy. Archives July 2021
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7/26/2021 People Push Medicare For All, As Congressional Advocates Back Off. By: Mark GruenbergRead Now Medicare For All/Twitter WASHINGTON—As citizens keep campaigning from coast to coast for Medicare For All, Congress appears to be even cooler to the cause than it was in prior years. In 56 cities from Washington to San Francisco, thousands of people marched for single-payer government-run health care on July 24. But 170 congressional Democrats, and, now, 17 unions are backing improvements in traditional Medicare, first. That isn’t the only hurdle facing Medicare For All. Lawmakers have yet to even hold a hearing on the single-payer plan, which would cover everyone for everything, including doctor and hospital visits, plus dental, vision, and hearing benefits. That’s unlike the last Congress. Then, under pressure from National Nurses United and other advocates, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., ordered hearings on Medicare For All. Then she told Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the key committee chair on health care issues, to bury it. If solons were to listen to citizens, they’d hear stories such as that from Joy Marie Mann, one of the speakers at the D.C. rally just 12 blocks from the Capitol. Mann woke up 18 months ago barely able to see. But her sudden myopic degeneration is one big problem. Her other problem: Despite her specialist’s letter saying she needs unique medications to prevent herself from totally going blind, she has to fight with her insurance company to get them to pay. Their denial of her care, despite years of coverage and thousands of dollars in premiums and out-of-pocket costs, is just one example, among millions, of why the nation needs Medicare For All and the end of the entire U.S. for-profit health care non-system, she told more than 100 people gathered for the D.C. rally and follow-up march. Medicare For All, advocates say, would eliminate the rapacious insurance companies, their high co-pays and deductibles, huge profits, multi-million-dollar executive salaries, abrupt decisions to drop which drugs they pay for, denials of care and—studies show—44,000 needless deaths every year of subscribers whom they refuse to cover when they get sick. Mann’s one of those who has to fight her insurer for coverage. Her medications cost $12,000 per eye for 30 days. “They tell me, ‘Sign this form. If you don’t, you have to pay $24,000.’ Or I have to live with 15% eyesight.” The insurers even denied her the $1,500 for a special large-type machine that scrolled her remarks. That’s despite insurers claiming they cover such durable medical equipment. “I couldn’t read a book for over a year” because she couldn’t afford the device, Mann said. “If you have to call the insurance companies every f—ing day to get coverage, that is not right!” she declared. And after Mann’s sight went south, her job—in health care for the elderly—went south, too. She’s had to start a “Go Fund Me” internet drive to pay the bills. The Medicare For All movement appears to be losing momentum in Congress, even though the coronavirus pandemic has torn open the gaping holes in U.S. health care. Not only has Medicare For All bill, HR1976, introduced in March, gone nowhere, but 17 unions announced July 17 they support legislation to bolster traditional Medicare itself. That measure would lower eligibility for Medicare to age 60, add dental, vision, and hearing coverage, and free Medicare to negotiate down prescription drug prices with Big Pharma. Democratic President Joe Biden, who opposes Medicare For All, offered those proposals. At least the president of one of those unions, James Slevin of the Utility Workers, pointedly added that expanding traditional Medicare is a step towards Medicare For All. The for-profit health care system devours one of every six dollars in U.S. gross domestic product, by far the highest share in the world, but does not give the U.S. people the highest-quality care in the world, figures show. The U.S. lags other developed nations in life expectancy and maternal mortality, with women of color three times as likely to die in childbirth as whites. And medical costs are the leading cause of personal bankruptcies.
“The American labor movement has fought for more than a century to make quality health care a basic right in the United States. On behalf of our collective membership, we urge you to take action in the American Families Plan package to improve health care for millions of Americans by improving and expanding the Medicare program.” “Nurses across the country have had to counsel and talk with patients who cannot afford care, and often watch as patients who decide not to seek care for financial reasons have simple health issues become life-threatening later on,” added National Nurses United Executive Director Bonnie Castillo, RN. Her union has led the decade-long charge for Medicare For All. “Whether it is lifesaving drugs, critical surgeries, or even just simple procedures, we see day in and day out how many people are being left behind by our current for-profit health care system. “Simply put: By lowering the eligibility age and expanding Medicare coverage, Congress has the opportunity to save millions of lives and prevent millions from going into financial ruin because of health care costs.” The other union signers were the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Government Employees (AFGE), the Teachers (AFT), the Postal Workers Union, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers, Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees/Teamsters, the Communications Workers, the Professional and Technical Engineers, the Painters, the Auto Workers, the Letter Carriers, National Nurses United, the Office and Professional Employees, the Transport Workers, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers and the Steelworkers. “Expanding Medicare benefits as far as possible would move us that much closer to a truly single payer health care system,” Utility Workers President Slevin contended. “Including provisions in the American Families package to improve and expand the Medicare program would be a significant step in the right direction.” The Medicare For All advocates also face another obstacle: Big money in corporate campaign contributions, and a campaign of lies against Medicare For All run by Big Pharma and its allies. They’ve spent millions, especially on Internet platforms, to malign single-payer. OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan organization which tracks both campaign finances and lobbying spending, reported health care companies spent $637.44 million on politics in the 2019-20 election cycle alone, the fourth-highest figure among all special interests. They spent another $621 million on lobbying lawmakers at the same time—and about $120 million more on influence-peddling in the first four months of 2021. About half of the 2019-20 contributions went to Democrats and party campaign committees. The rest split between Republicans and “independent expenditure” issue ads. AuthorMark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of Press Associates Inc. (PAI), a union news service in Washington, D.C. that he has headed since 1999. Previously, he worked as Washington correspondent for the Ottaway News Service, as Port Jervis bureau chief for the Middletown, NY Times Herald Record, and as a researcher and writer for Congressional Quarterly. Mark obtained his BA in public policy from the University of Chicago and worked as the University of Chicago correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. This article was republished from People's World. Archives July 2021 7/26/2021 Letter from drone war whistleblower Daniel Hale to Judge Liam O’Grady. By: Daniel HaleRead Now “We now kill people without ever seeing them. Now you push a button thousands of miles away … Since it’s all done by remote control, there’s no remorse … and then we come home in triumph.” —US Navy Admiral Gene LaRocque, speaking to a reporter in 1995. Dear Judge O’Grady, It is not a secret that I struggle to live with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Both stem from my childhood experience growing up in a rural mountain community and were compounded by exposure to combat during military service. Depression is a constant. Though stress, particularly stress caused by war, can manifest itself at different times and in different ways. The tell-tale signs of a person afflicted by PTSD and depression can often be outwardly observed and are practically universally recognizable. Hard lines about the face and jaw. Eyes, once bright and wide, now deepset and fearful. And an inexplicably sudden loss of interest in things that used to spark joy. These are the noticeable changes in my demeanor marked by those who knew me before and after military service. To say that the period of my life spent serving in the United States Air Force had an impression on me would be an understatement. It is more accurate to say that it irreversibly transformed my identity as an American. Having forever altered the thread of my life’s story, weaved into the fabric of our nation’s history. To better appreciate the significance of how this came to pass, I would like to explain my experience deployed to Afghanistan as it was in 2012 and how it is I came to violate the Espionage Act, as a result. In my capacity as a signals intelligence analyst stationed at Bagram Airbase, I was made to track down the geographic location of handset cellphone devices believed to be in the possession of so-called enemy combatants. To accomplish this mission required access to a complex chain of globe-spanning satellites capable of maintaining an unbroken connection with remotely piloted aircraft, commonly referred to as drones. Once a steady connection is made and a targeted cell phone device is acquired, an imagery analyst in the U.S., in coordination with a drone pilot and camera operator, would take over using information I provided to surveil everything that occurred within the drone’s field of vision. This was done, most often, to document the day-to-day lives of suspected militants. Sometimes, under the right conditions, an attempt at capture would be made. Other times, a decision to strike and kill them where they stood would be weighed. The first time that I witnessed a drone strike came within days of my arrival to Afghanistan. Early that morning, before dawn, a group of men had gathered together in the mountain ranges of Patika provence around a campfire carrying weapons and brewing tea. That they carried weapons with them would not have been considered out of the ordinary in the place I grew up, muchless within the virtually lawless tribal territories outside the control of the Afghan authorities. Except that among them was a suspected member of the Taliban, given away by the targeted cell phone device in his pocket. As for the remaining individuals, to be armed, of military age, and sitting in the presence of an alleged enemy combatant was enough evidence to place them under suspicion as well. Despite having peacefully assembled, posing no threat, the fate of the now tea drinking men had all but been fulfilled. I could only look on as I sat by and watched through a computer monitor when a sudden, terrifying flurry of hellfire missiles came crashing down, splattering purple-colored crystal guts on the side of the morning mountain. Since that time and to this day, I continue to recall several such scenes of graphic violence carried out from the cold comfort of a computer chair. Not a day goes by that I don’t question the justification for my actions. By the rules of engagement, it may have been permissible for me to have helped to kill those men—whose language I did not speak, customs I did not understand, and crimes I could not identify—in the gruesome manner that I did. Watch them die. But how could it be considered honorable of me to continuously have laid in wait for the next opportunity to kill unsuspecting persons, who, more often than not, are posing no danger to me or any other person at the time. Nevermind honorable, how could it be that any thinking person continued to believe that it was necessary for the protection of the United States of America to be in Afghanistan and killing people, not one of whom present was responsible for the September 11th attacks on our nation. Notwithstanding, in 2012, a full year after the demise of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, I was a part of killing misguided young men who were but mere children on the day of 9/11. Nevertheless, in spite of my better instincts, I continued to follow orders and obey my command for fear of repercussion. Yet, all the while, becoming increasingly aware that the war had very little to do with preventing terror from coming into the United States and a lot more to do with protecting the profits of weapons manufacturers and so-called defense contractors. The evidence of this fact was laid bare all around me. In the longest or most technologically advanced war in American history, contract mercenaries outnumbered uniform wearing soldiers 2 to 1 and earned as much as 10 times their salary. Meanwhile, it did not matter whether it was, as I had seen, an Afghan farmer blown in half, yet miraculously conscious and pointlessly trying to scoop his insides off the ground, or whether it was an American flag-draped coffin lowered into Arlington National Cemetery to the sound of a 21-gun salute. Bang, bang, bang. Both served to justify the easy flow of capital at the cost of blood—theirs and ours. When I think about this I am grief-stricken and ashamed of myself for the things I’ve done to support it. The most harrowing day of my life came months into my deployment to Afghanistan when a routine surveillance mission turned into disaster. For weeks we had been tracking the movements of a ring of car bomb manufacturers living around Jalalabad. Car bombs directed at US bases had become an increasingly frequent and deadly problem that summer, so much effort was put into stopping them. It was a windy and clouded afternoon when one of the suspects had been discovered headed eastbound, driving at a high rate of speed. This alarmed my superiors who believe he might be attempting to escape across the border into Pakistan. A drone strike was our only chance and already it began lining up to take the shot. But the less advanced predator drone found it difficult to see through clouds and compete against strong headwinds. The single payload MQ-1 failed to connect with its target, instead missing by a few meters. The vehicle, damaged, but still driveable, continued on ahead after narrowly avoiding destruction. Eventually, once the concern of another incoming missile subsided, the driver stopped, got out of the car, and checked himself as though he could not believe he was still alive. Out of the passenger side came a woman wearing an unmistakable burka. As astounding as it was to have just learned there had been a woman, possibly his wife, there with the man we intended to kill moments ago, I did not have the chance to see what happened next before the drone diverted its camera when she began frantically to pull out something from the back of the car. A couple of days passed before I finally learned from a briefing by my commanding officer about what took place. There indeed had been the suspect’s wife with him in the car. And in the back were their two young daughters, ages 5 and 3 years old. A cadre of Afghan soldiers were sent to investigate where the car had stopped the following day. It was there they found them placed in the dumpster nearby. The eldest was found dead due to unspecified wounds caused by shrapnel that pierced her body. Her younger sister was alive but severely dehydrated. As my commanding officer relayed this information to us she seemed to express disgust, not for the fact that we had errantly fired on a man and his family, having killed one of his daughters; but for the suspected bomb maker having ordered his wife to dump the bodies of their daughters in the trash, so that the two of them could more quickly escape across the border. Now, whenever I encounter an individual who thinks that drone warfare is justified and reliably keeps America safe, I remember that time and ask myself how could I possibly continue to believe that I am a good person, deserving of my life and the right to pursue happiness. One year later, at a farewell gathering for those of us who would soon be leaving military service, I sat alone, transfixed by the television, while others reminisced together. On television was breaking news of the president giving his first public remarks about the policy surrounding the use of drone technology in warfare. His remarks were made to reassure the public of reports scrutinizing the death of civilians in drone strikes and the targeting of American citizens. The president said that a high standard of “near certainty” needed to be met in order to ensure that no civilians were present. But from what I knew, of the instances where civilians plausibly could have been present, those killed were nearly always designated enemies killed in action unless proven otherwise. Nonetheless, I continued to heed his words as the president went on to explain how a drone could be used to eliminate someone who posed an “imminent threat” to the United States. Using the analogy of taking out a sniper, with his sights set on an unassuming crowd of people, the president likened the use of drones to prevent a would-be terrorist from carrying out his evil plot. But, as I understood it to be, the unassuming crowd had been those who lived in fear and the terror of drones in their skies and the sniper in this scenario had been me. I came to believe that the policy of drone assasiniation was being used to mislead the public that it keeps us safe, and when I finally left the military, still processing what I’d been a part of, I began to speak out, believing my participation in the drone program to have been deeply wrong. I dedicated myself to anti-war activism, and was asked to partake in a peace conference in Washington, DC late November, 2013. People had come together from around the world to share experiences about what it is like living in the age of drones. Fazil bin Ali Jaber had journeyed from Yemen to tell us of what happened to his brother Salem bin Ali Jaber and their cousin Waleed. Waleed had been a policeman and Salem was a well-respected firebrand Imam, known for giving sermons to young men about the path towards destruction should they choose to take up violent jihad. A US drone strike on a civilian vehicle, similar to the harrowing incident described by Fazil One day in August 2012, local members of Al Qaeda traveling through Fazil’s village in a car spotted Salem in the shade, pulled up towards him, and beckoned him to come over and speak to them. Not one to miss an opportunity to evangelize to the youth, Salem proceeded cautiously with Waleed by his side. Fazil and other villagers began looking on from afar. Farther still was an ever present reaper drone looking too. As Fazil recounted what happened next, I felt myself transported back in time to where I had been on that day, 2012. Unbeknownst to Fazil and those of his village at the time was that they had not been the only watching Salem approach the jihadist in the car. From Afghanistan, I and everyone on duty paused their work to witness the carnage that was about to unfold. At the press of a button from thousands of miles away, two hellfire missiles screeched out of the sky, followed by two more. Showing no signs of remorse, I, and those around me, clapped and cheered triumphantly. In front of a speechless auditorium, Fazil wept. About a week after the peace conference I received a lucrative job offer if I were to come back to work as a government contractor. I felt uneasy about the idea. Up to that point, my only plan post military separation had been to enroll in college to complete my degree. But the money I could make was by far more than I had ever made before; in fact, it was more than any of my college-educated friends were making. So, after giving it careful consideration, I delayed going to school for a semester and took the job. For a long time I was uncomfortable with myself over the thought of taking advantage of my military background to land a cushy desk job. During that time I was still processing what I had been through and I was starting to wonder if I was contributing again to the problem of money and war by accepting to return as a defense contractor. Worse was my growing apprehension that everyone around me was also taking part in a collective delusion and denial that was used to justify our exorbitant salaries, for comparatively easy labor. The thing I feared most at the time was the temptation not to question it. Then it came to be that one day after work I stuck around to socialize with a pair of co-workers whose talented work I had come to greatly admire. They made me feel welcomed, and I was happy to have earned their approval. But then, to my dismay, our brand-new friendship took an unexpectedly dark turn. They elected that we should take a moment and view together some archived footage of past drone strikes. Such bonding ceremonies around a computer to watch so-called “war porn” had not been new to me. I partook in them all the time while deployed to Afghanistan. But on that day, years after the fact, my new friends gaped and sneered, just as my old one’s had, at the sight of faceless men in the final moments of their lives. I sat by watching too; said nothing and felt my heart breaking into pieces. Your Honor, the truest truism that I’ve come to understand about the nature of war is that war is trauma. I believe that any person either called-upon or coerced to participate in war against their fellow man is promised to be exposed to some form of trauma. In that way, no soldier blessed to have returned home from war does so uninjured. The crux of PTSD is that it is a moral conundrum that afflicts invisible wounds on the psyche of a person made to burden the weight of experience after surviving a traumatic event. How PTSD manifests depends on the circumstances of the event. So how is the drone operator to process this? The victorious rifleman, unquestioningly remorseful, at least keeps his honor intact by having faced off against his enemy on the battlefield. The determined fighter pilot has the luxury of not having to witness the gruesome aftermath. But what possibly could I have done to cope with the undeniable cruelties that I perpetuated? My conscience, once held at bay, came roaring back to life. At first, I tried to ignore it. Wishing instead that someone, better placed than I, should come along to take this cup from me. But this too was folly. Left to decide whether to act, I only could do that which I ought to do before God and my own conscience. The answer came to me, that to stop the cycle of violence, I ought to sacrifice my own life and not that of another person. So, I contacted an investigative reporter, with whom I had had an established prior relationship, and told him that I had something the American people needed to know. Respectfully, Daniel Hale AuthorThis article was republished from Counter Currents. Archives July 2021  A woman and man cutting endive lettuce in the Imperial Valley. (David Bacon) If the Senate passes, and President Biden signs, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, U.S. growers and labor contractors will benefit, but most farmworkers will not. There should be no question that undocumented farmworkers need and deserve legal status in this country. They have fed us, not just during the pandemic, but for as long as we’ve had wage labor in agriculture. But farmworkers, along with all other undocumented families, need and deserve a bill that provides legal status without imposing the notorious H-2A and E-Verify programs as the price. Growers need labor, but farmworkers need a sustainable future that promises dignified and well-paid work, not just for this generation, but for generations to come. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act passed the House once under Trump, and then again this spring. With no discussion of its possible negative impact, every Democrat in Congress voted for it, except for Maine’s Representative Jared Golden. Yet this bill, presented as a legalization program for undocumented farmworkers, will likely lead to the replacement of as much as half of the nation’s farmworkers by workers brought into the U.S. by growers using the H-2A guest worker program. That, in turn, will cement in place the existing deep poverty in farmworker communities, and make it much more difficult for farmworkers to change this. Rosalinda Guillen, director of the women-led farmworker organization Community to Community in Washington State, has a long history pushing for equitable opportunities for farm workers and their families to build community. “The nation’s farmworkers,” she says, “should be recognized as a valuable skilled workforce, able to use their knowledge to innovate sustainable practices. Most are indigenous immigrants and have the right to maintain cultural traditions and languages and to participate with their multicultural neighbors in building a better America. This bill instead treats farm workers as a disposable workforce for corporate agriculture.” Last year growers were certified to bring in 275,000 H-2A workers. That is over 10% of the farm workforce in the U.S. and a number that has doubled in just five years and tripled in eight. In states like Georgia and Washington, this program will fill a majority of farm labor jobs in the next year or two. This program has been studied in many reports over the last decade, from “Close to Slavery” by the Southern Poverty Law Center to “Ripe for Reform” by the Centro de Derechos de los Migrantes to “Exploitation or Dignity” by the Oakland Institute. All document a record of systematic abuse of workers in the program, and the use of the program to replace farmworkers (themselves immigrants) already living in the U.S. In 2019 the Department of Labor only punished 25 of the 11,000 growers and labor contractors using the program despite extensive violations, and the punishments were small fines and suspension from it for three years. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act continues this abuse and will accelerate sharply the replacement of the existing workforce. The bill freezes the minimum wage for H-2A workers, already close to minimum wage, for a year, and opens the door to abolishing the wage guarantee entirely. This will not only hurt H-2A workers themselves. It will effectively push down the wages of all farmworkers. A long record documents the firing, deportation, and blacklisting of H-2A workers who organize or strike. Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the new union for Washington farmworkers, has helped those workers protest, but seen them forced to leave the county over and over again as a result. Growers are currently permitted to violate anti-discrimination laws by refusing to hire women or older workers. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act does not protect them. The bill, however, does have a provision making it mandatory that growers use the notorious E-Verify system to check the immigration status of workers, and refuse to hire anyone undocumented. This provision will have an enormous impact. Half of the nation’s 2.4 million farmworkers are undocumented. While some will qualify for the bill’s tortuous legalization program, many will not. Denying jobs to hundreds of thousands of farmworkers will cause immense suffering for their families. This would be a bitter reward for feeding the country through the COVID crisis. Those who qualify for legalization will be required to continue working in agriculture for a period of years. Losing employment will therefore mean losing their temporary legal status, making it extremely risky for them to organize unions or strike. Growers, meanwhile, will use the H-2A program to replace domestic workers who can’t legalize or who leave the workforce for other reasons, including local workers who organize and strike. There are no protections in the bill at all for farmworkers’ right to organize – either for H-2A workers or workers who are living here. This is a very threatening scenario for farmworker families. Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, says, “In Washington State, we have fought with labor contractors and growers for years to protect farmworker rights, of both H-2A and resident workers. Our lived experience tells us what the impact of this bill will be.” AuthorDavid Bacon is a California journalist covering farm labor and immigration. His latest book is In the Fields of the North (University of California, 2017). This article was republished from People's World. Archives July 2021  Workers decorate an office of the Kurdistan Communist Party - Iraq. With one lonely member of parliament, one might think the KCP is a marginal force, but its influence far outstrips its electoral performance. | Kurdistan TV via KCP SULAYMANIYAH, Iraqi Kurdistan—For those who have followed the development of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq since its formation after the Kurdish rebellion of 1991, the names Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani have been inextricably tied to the region’s politics. Their respective parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), have long dominated the political landscape, dividing the territory of the autonomous region between themselves after a period of intense inner-Kurdish warfare in the 1990s. Today, they each maintain their own Peshmerga military formations, and the KRG often appears to function as a one-party state, though paradoxically, there are two of them.
Then there is the oldest party in the Kurdistan Region, the Kurdistan Communist Party. With one lonely MP, one could be forgiven for having the impression that the Communists are a marginal force. The party’s influence and importance to the region, however, far outstrip its electoral performance. The rich history of the Iraqi/Kurdistan Communist Party The Kurdistan Communist Party was technically founded in 1993, although in reality this simply meant the branch of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) in what had become the Kurdistan Region was now solely responsible for its own affairs in the new de facto independent area. The Iraqi party dates its foundation back to 1934. It played a vital role in the formation of the country’s working-class organizations, including the establishment of trade unions. The party has experienced periods of legality and illegality throughout its existence and had a contradictory relationship with the Ba’ath Party that ruled the country for nearly four decades. In 1963, the U.S.-backed Ba’athist coup that deposed Abd al-Karim Qasim led to thousands of Communist Party members being slaughtered in the following days, with party leader Salam Adil among those executed. However, in the mid-1970s, relations between the Communist Party and the Ba’athists warmed somewhat, with the Communists initially viewing Saddam Hussein positively when he came to power, even referring to him in glowing terms as Iraq’s own variant of Fidel Castro in the aftermath of nationalization campaigns. This led to their inclusion in the National Progressive Front in 1975, which meant accepting the Ba’ath Party’s dominance over Iraqi political life. However, certain contradictions soon began to appear irreconcilable. The Communists were proud of their heritage as a multinational party and advocated an Iraqi state with full rights for both of its dominant nations, Arabs and Kurds. This had initially been the line of the Qasim government that had taken power in 1958, which the Communists generally supported. By contrast, the Ba’athist ideology could make no room for Kurds in its Arab nationalist orientation unless they agreed to a position of subservience and second-class citizenship.
In Sulaymaniyah, where the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) is the dominant political force, I was able to speak with the Deputy Secretary-General for the Communist Party in the governorate, Hawre Gorran. On the right of nations to self-determination Gorran begins by making it clear that the KRG should be united, not divided into two camps that are each under the control of either the KDP or PUK. He is clear in his opposition to the vast privatization that has taken place under each party in the areas of health, education, and electricity, but also keenly aware that division between the Talabani and Barzani cliques has been catastrophic. “The Kurdistan Communist Party played a very important role in mediating between the KDP and PUK during the civil war that was fought between 1994 and 1997. Our leader at that time, Aziz Muhammad, helped bring them together to end the conflict,” he says. Muhammad, who passed away in 2017, was a legendary figure on the Kurdish and Iraqi left and was symbolic of the Communist Party’s approach to unity between Arabs and Kurds, serving as leader of the Iraqi party from 1964 to 1993, then of the independent Kurdish party after that.
When asked about the KCP’s relationships with other communist parties in the region who may oppose Kurdish independence, Gorran attempts to toe a diplomatic line, saying it would probably be better if I ask those parties why they take such a position. In the end, however, he says, “It is clearly related to chauvinism. This is not a communist position. It has nothing to do with Lenin’s conception of a nation’s right to be self-determining.” On the reactionary role of the United States in Kurdistan This question was wrapped up in another extremely important point that needed to be clarified, which is the relationship between Kurdistan as an oppressed nation and the role of the United States in the region. Much of the apprehension that I have often encountered in regards to the Kurdish question from leftists and those calling themselves communists is that Kurds are merely auxiliaries of U.S. imperialism in the region, and therefore their national liberation struggle is not worthy of support. But the KCP makes it clear that they are opponents of U.S. imperialism, and the party is not afraid to speak out against the machinations of Washington in the region or criticize certain decisions taken by parties or organizations they otherwise have friendly relations with. Hawre Gorran says, “The U.S. is working for its own interests all over the Middle East. It doesn’t care about the Kurdish people. For example, they opposed the 2017 independence referendum, and when the Iraqi government captured Kirkuk, an agreement was signed for oil extraction there that clearly benefits imperialism.”
Gorran says in response, “Any agreement that is made has to take people’s needs into account. This agreement offers no protection for the people. The United States and Russia are playing a role in controlling resources in the Middle East. Any force in Rojava should be prioritizing and protecting people’s interests.” On women’s liberation Perhaps the most impressive, progressive element of that struggle in northern Syria, as well as its most concrete achievement, has been the central role that women have played in it. Indeed, the image of the fearless Kurdish woman fighter has become prevalent across the world in recent years as a result. However, there is nothing necessarily new about women playing roles equal to men in the leftist movement in Kurdistan. According to Hawre Gorran, equality of women is “extremely important” to the KCP. He elaborates, saying, “It’s essential that women are not only members of the party, but that they are able to elevate themselves to be leading cadre. In our Central Committee, it is a rule that at least 25% of members need to be women.”
I ask what stands in the way of changing these backward, patriarchal relations. “The mentality of people is a big obstacle. Often, it is their interpretation of religion that makes people believe that things are naturally supposed to be this way.” On the struggle for democracy in Kurdistan If women’s rights in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq continue to be stalled, and only incremental progress has been made, then what does this say about the state of democracy in general in the region? Gorran says, “If we look at the history of any country, we can see that the democratic struggle takes a long time. We had the struggle against the Ba’athist chauvinists, then the inner-Kurdish war. Democracy has not yet reached a higher level. For instance, Massoud Barzani has no official position, yet he still remains the main point of contact for everything in the KRG. Therefore, he effectively runs everything.” He is also eager to point out that while parties such as the PUK and KDP continue the ruling family’s dominance in leadership positions, the KCP has a different idea of democratic norms. “We have changed our General Secretary four times since our party was founded in 1993. This is very different from the other parties.” This kind of non-democratic management of the major parties also has the effect of blurring the lines between the government and what should be fighting organizations of the working class, the trade unions. Gorran says that “Many unions were created here after 1991. Some are not controlled by the PUK or KDP, but some are. For example, they control the Journalists’ Union.” This was quite a revelation. It certainly doesn’t seem far-fetched to believe that the Barzani and Talabani families having this degree of influence over the union of the region’s press workers would translate into—or help to reinforce—their control over the media and dissemination of information. Gorran says that the fighting power of many unions is compromised by these relationships, thus helping maintain the impression that there is more democracy than there often is. “One union, for instance, had a demonstration at a government office. But this union is allied to the PUK. It, therefore, becomes a sort of controlled opposition.” According to Gorran, “You used to only be able to get public sector jobs by being a member of one of the two main parties. Nowadays, this is also applying to the private sector.” In December 2020, anger and frustration at the government’s corruption, nepotism, mass unemployment, and non-payment of salaries to public sector workers for several months led to a series of demonstrations across Sulaymaniyah. In the crackdown unleashed by security forces, ten people were killed. For the Communist Party, these demonstrations were certainly worthy of support, and they played a key role in amplifying the voice of the protesters and rallying to their side, even as they cautioned against the use of violence as a tactic. After nine days, however, the movement seemed to run out of steam, not least because of the harsh repression unleashed by the authorities. “After these protests, only one or two politicians resigned. This shows that we have a long way to go.” Toward a communist horizon in Kurdistan Far from being a political party that can be summed up as operating on the fringes of Iraqi Kurdistan’s social life, I found that in reality, the Kurdistan Communist Party is continuing to build upon its rich history of militant, working-class struggle. Its necessity surely appears validated by the current situation in the region, one in which the democratic struggle feels stifled, and in which the emerging opposition forces of recent years have ebbed in popularity.
I’m reminded at this point of something Hawre Gorran said as we were wrapping up the interview. Speaking about the importance of maintaining a Marxist perspective in the 21st century, he said “It’s essential that we stay true to our principles. We know that only socialism is the answer to not only Kurdistan’s problems but those of the whole world.” AuthorMarcel Cartier is a critically acclaimed hip-hop artist, journalist, and the author of two books on the Kurdish liberation movement, including 2019’s Serkeftin: A Narrative of the Rojava Revolution, which was one of the first full accounts in English of the civil and political structures set up in northern Syria after 2012. This article was republished from People's World. Archives July 2021  Bezos does not care that each and every one of his joy-ride space launches punches a larger hole in the Earth's ozone layer exacerbating our climate crisis. This is all about him, his money, his fame, and his super-sized ego. Jeff Bezos (the richest man in the world) successfully took his new wild west rodeo show to the edge of space and once returning to Mother Earth had the audacity to lecture us earthlings on a few things. Yahoo News reported Bezos saying: “We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space. And keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is.” In this same interview, Bezos discussed his plans to expand Blue Origin’s space tourism business over the coming decades, a venture that has the potential to pump massive amounts of carbon and other chemicals into the atmosphere. Unlike ground-based emitters like cars or coal-powered plants, rocket emissions are expelled directly into the upper atmosphere, where they linger for years. Dr. Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director of Scientists for Global Responsibility, writes:….the fuel combination used by [Bezos is] a higher carbon fuel. Research by the University of Colorado indicates that this can damage the stratospheric ozone layer – not only leading to higher levels of damaging ultra-violet radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, but also causing a global heating effect likely to be considerably greater than that from the carbon emissions alone. And the aim of these journeys? A few minutes of zero-gravity experience and a nice view. It is hard to see this as anything more than environmental vandalism for the super-rich. As the CEO of Amazon, for years Bezos fought against company efforts to unionize, even amid credible reports of inhumane, exploitative conditions for Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers. He said, “I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this.” The truth is that virtually all space technology ‘research and development’ since the dawn of the space age was done by NASA and the military industrial complex. That means the taxpayers paid for it. And now when it is possible to make gobs of money from space tourism, colonization, and mining, the capitalist dominated US government is eager to privatize space operations. They don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. America, after all, is the ‘exceptional’ nation. It was during the Obama administration that a new law called Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, sometimes referred to as the Spurring Private Aerospace Competitiveness and Entrepreneurship (SPACE) Act of 2015, was signed by the president. The UK Independent reported in 2015:Much of the ownership of space is regulated by the “Outer Space Treaty”, a document that was signed by the US and Russia among other countries in the 1960s. As well as saying that the moon and other celestial objects are part of the “common heritage of mankind”, it says that exploration must be peaceful and bans countries from putting weapons on the moon and other celestial bodies. The US government has now thrown out that understanding so that it can get rid of “unnecessary regulations” and make it easier for private American companies to explore space resources commercially. While people won’t actually be able to claim the rock or “celestial body” itself, they will be able to keep everything that they mine out of it. Planetary Resources, an American company that intends to make money by mining asteroids, said that the new law was the “single greatest recognition of property rights in history”, and that it “establishes the same supportive framework that created the great economies of history, and will encourage the sustained development of space”. So Bezos was wearing the cowboy hat as a message to the world that a new ‘gold rush’ has begun in space and that it will be controlled by rich fat-cat psychopaths like him. They intend to circumvent United Nations space law like the Outer Space and Moon Treaties that state the “heavens are the province of all humankind.” Bezos does not care that each and every one of his joy-ride space launches punch a larger hole in the Earth’s ozone layer exacerbating our climate crisis. This is all about him, his money, his fame, and his super-sized ego. If we hope to survive on planet Earth and give life to future generations, then the global public must demand that space stooges like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and the rest of their ilk, are restrained and prevented from playing god. ~ Bruce Gagnon Coordinates the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. Check out our short space issues videos on our website. AuthorBruce Gagnon is the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. This article was republished from People's World. Archives July 2021 7/25/2021 Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China. By: TricontinentalRead Now Women who migrated to the Wangjia community participate in local activities at the community centre in Tongren City, Guizhou Province, April 2021. These photographs were made during a trip to Guizhou Province visiting people and sites linked to China’s targeted poverty alleviation programme. The drawn lines extending on top of the images remind us of architectural sketches. Socialism, after all, is about the constant work of construction. This visual language speaks to the name of the series of publications on socialist construction that this study inaugurates. Contents Grandma Peng Lanhua in her two-hundred-year-old home, renovated and serviced with electricity, running water, and satellite television in the village of Danyang, Guizhou Province, April 2021. Part I: Introduction ⤴Grandmother Peng Lanhua lives in a two-hundred-year-old rickety wooden house in a remote village of Guizhou Province. Born in 1935, she grew up in a China that was under Japanese occupation and entered adolescence during the Chinese Revolution. Peng is one of the few people in her community who did not want to relocate as part of the government’s poverty alleviation programme when the government designated her house unsafe to live in. Since 2013, eighty-six other households whose houses were deemed too dangerous or for whom jobs could not be generated locally were moved to a newly built community an hour’s drive away. But Peng has her reasons for not moving. She is eighty-six years-old and lives with Alzheimer’s disease. In addition to low-income insurance and a modest pension, she receives supplemental income from a new grapefruit company that leased her family’s land. The company, whose dividends are distributed to villagers like Peng as part of the national anti-poverty efforts, was established to develop the local agricultural industry. Peng’s daughter and son-in-law live next door in a two-storey house they built with government subsidies. Her children are employed. In other words, her basic needs are cared for, and relocation is voluntary. ‘We can’t force anyone to move, but we still have to provide the “three guarantees and two assurances”’, says Liu Yuanxue, the Party cadre sent to live in the village to see that every household emerges from extreme poverty. He is referring to the government poverty alleviation programme’s guarantee of safe housing, health care, and education, as well as being fed and clothed. Liu visits Peng on a monthly basis, as he does with all the households in the village. Through these visits, he comes to know the details of each person’s life. ‘The floor is too messy’, Liu says, jokingly reprimanding Peng’s daughter-in-law as he enters the large wooden house. She is also a member of the Communist Party of China. On the wall, a poster of Chairman Mao and, next to him, President Xi Jinping, pay homage to two of China’s socialist leaders who bookend the course of Peng’s life. Below their portraits sit a weathered table and a dusty terracotta water jug, an internet router flashing green beside them. A string of ethernet cables and wires stretch to different corners of the house (each house gets free internet and CCTV satellite television for three years before a subsidised rate sets in). There are energy-saving lightbulbs in each room and a satellite dish installed next to Peng’s hanging laundry. An extension of the house was built with a toilet and shower equipped with solar-heated running water, the mud floor poured over with concrete. As Lenin said, ‘Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country’. Strengthening the Party in the countryside and meeting the concrete needs of the people have been pillars in China’s fight against poverty. Liu’s visit to Peng’s house is just one everyday scene in that process. The fact that Peng has lived in this house for half a century is also a product of the Revolution; in the 1970s, during the Cultural Revolution, the house was confiscated from a rich landlord and redistributed to three poor peasant families, including Peng’s. That cadres like Liu visit her on a monthly basis, that her house has been made safe to live in through the recent renovations, and that there is internet to connect the poorest of rural villages with the world is a continuation of this revolutionary history. After all, ensuring that the country’s workers and peasants like Peng get housed, fed, clothed, and cared for is part of China’s long struggle against poverty and a fundamental stage in constructing a socialist society. The Greatest Anti-Poverty Achievement in HistoryOn 25 February 2021, the Chinese government announced that extreme poverty had been abolished in China, a country of 1.4 billion people. This historic victory is a culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949. The early decades of socialist construction laid the foundation that was deepened during the reform and opening-up period. During this time, 850 million Chinese people were lifted and lifted themselves out of poverty; that is to say, 70 percent of the world’s total poverty reduction took place in China. In the most recent ‘targeted’ phase that began in 2013, the Chinese government spent 1.6 trillion yuan (US$246 billion) to build 1.1 million kilometres of rural roads, bring internet access to 98 percent of the country’s poor villages, renovate homes for 25.68 million people, and build new homes for 9.6 million others. Since 2013, millions of people, state-owned and private enterprises, and broad sectors of society have been mobilised to ensure that – despite the pandemic – China’s remaining 98.99 million people from 832 counties and 128,000 villages exit absolute poverty.[1] In 2019, as China entered the last stages of its poverty eradication scheme, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said, ‘Every time I visit China, I am stunned by the speed of change and progress. You have created one of the most dynamic economies in the world, while helping more than 800 million people to lift themselves out of poverty – the greatest anti-poverty achievement in history’.[2] While China has been fighting poverty, the rest of the world, especially the Global South, has experienced a downward turn. United Nations agencies report a great reversal in poverty elimination outside of China: in 2020, over 71 million people – most of whom are in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia – slipped back into poverty, marking the first global poverty increase since 1998.[3] It is estimated that the economic crisis accelerated by the pandemic will drive a total of 251 million people into extreme poverty by 2030, bringing the total number to over one billion.[4] That China was successful in combatting poverty in a time of such reversal is neither a miracle nor a coincidence, but rather a testament to its socialist commitment. This stands in contrast to capitalist societies’ indifference to the needs of the poor and the working classes, whose conditions have only worsened during the pandemic. This study looks into the process through which China was able to eradicate extreme poverty as a fundamental step in constructing socialism. Based on a range of Chinese and English sources, the study is divided into five key parts: historical context, poverty alleviation theory and practice, targeted poverty alleviation, case studies, and the challenges and horizons ahead. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research also conducted interviews with leading Chinese and international experts and made field visits to poverty alleviation sites in Guizhou Province, where the last nine counties lifted out of poverty are located. There, we visited poor villages, industrial projects, and relocation sites. We spoke with peasants, Party cadres, business owners, workers, youth, women, and elders who have been directly impacted by and have participated in the fight against poverty. Woven throughout the text, their stories are just a few among the millions who have contributed to this historic process.  A mural of Mao Zedong displayed in a rural village and local ‘red tourism’ attraction in Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021. Part II: Historical Context ⤴Meeting the People’s Increasing Needs for a Better LifeMy mother has two daughters, a young son who is now working in Guangzhou, and seven grandchildren. She has worked really hard to support her three children’s educations. She herself was only able to finish the second grade at primary school and started working soon afterwards by selling vegetables, going out very early in the morning and coming home late at night. Life was really tough when I was young. We ate corn grits all the time and never had rice. Now mother is here, cooking meals for the children, buying groceries, and taking her walks now and then. We would be worried if she stayed alone in her old home. Now it’s much easier for her to go back, as it only takes two or three hours. She travels back to her old home on special occasions. Sadly, my father, who had never been here, passed away a couple of years ago. His greatest hope was to come and visit here, but he died of a brain haemorrhage. He Ying is a relocated member of the Wangjia community, where she became a Party leader. Her mother is sixty-nine years old, just three years younger than the Chinese revolution. Her lifetime traces the multigenerational struggle against poverty that the country has undertaken. Days before the official proclamation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949, Chairman Mao Zedong said: ‘The Chinese people, comprising one quarter of humankind, have now stood up’.[5] China’s national liberation came after what is referred to as a ‘century of humiliation’ at the hands of European colonial powers, a bloody civil war with Nationalist forces, and fourteen years of resistance against Japanese fascism that claimed up to thirty-five million Chinese lives.[6] Internally, the Nationalist Party, warlords, and feudal landlords prioritised their class interests over the well-being of the people and the country. During this period, China would go from being the biggest global economy to one of the world’s poorest countries. Accounting for one-third of the global economy in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the country’s GDP would fall to less than 5 percent by the PRC’s founding. In 1950, only two Asian and eight African countries had lower per capita GDPs than China: Myanmar, Mongolia, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Lesotho, Malawi, and Tanzania.[7] In other words, the PRC was the eleventh poorest nation in the world upon its founding. When the communists came into power, they were faced with the challenge of reversing the country’s long term economic and social decline, beginning with meeting the basic needs of the country’s impoverished peasants and working class. From 1949 to 1976, under Mao’s leadership, the Chinese government focused on improving the quality of life for its population, which had grown from 542 to 937 million people.[8] In the first years of this period, poverty was addressed by transforming private ownership of the means of production into public hands and redistributing land from landlords and warlords to poor peasants. Poverty, after all, is an issue of class struggle. By 1956, 90 percent of the country’s peasants had land to till, 100 million peasants were organised in agricultural cooperatives, and private industry was effectively abolished. People’s Communes organised collective ownership of the land and means of production and distributed collective wealth, enabling the agricultural surplus to be invested into industrial development and social welfare.[9] In the twenty-nine-year pre-reform period (1949-1978), China’s life expectancy increased by thirty-two years. In other words, for every year after the Revolution, more than one year was added to the life of an average Chinese person. In 1949, the country’s population was 80 percent illiterate, which in less than three decades was reduced to 16.4 percent in urban areas and 34.7 percent in rural areas; the enrolment of school-age children increased from 20 to 90 percent; and the number of hospitals tripled. The decentralisation of the health and education systems from elite urban centres to poor rural areas was key. This process included establishing middle schools for workers and peasants and dispatching millions of barefoot doctors to the countryside. Significant advances were made in women’s participation in society, from abolishing patriarchal marriage customs to increasing access to education, health care, and childcare.[10] From 1952 to 1977, the average annual industrial output growth rate was 11.3 percent.[11] In terms of productive capacity and technological development, China went from not being able to manufacture a car domestically in 1949 to launching its first satellite into outer space in 1970. The Dongfanghong satellite (meaning ‘The East is Red’) played the eponymous revolutionary song on loop while in orbit for twenty-eight days.[12] The industrial, economic, and social gains in the transition to socialism under Mao formed the foundation of the post-1978 period. By the 1970s, it became clear that China’s economy required an infusion of technology and capital, and that it needed to break its isolation from the world market. As China’s leader Deng Xiaoping later wrote, ‘Pauperism is not socialism, still less communism’.[13] The government introduced a range of economic reforms, including opening the economy to the world market, but – because China remained a socialist country – the public sector remained dominant and free of foreign control. During this period, China’s economy grew at a sustained pace never before seen in human history. Between 1978 and 2017, China’s economy expanded at an average rate of 9.5 percent per year, growing in size by almost thirty-five times.[14] Economic growth, however, is not an end in itself, but a means to improve the lives of the people. Between 1978 and 2011, the number of people living in absolute poverty dropped from 770 million (80 percent of the population) to 122 million (9.1 percent), measured by setting the poverty line at 2,300 yuan per year.[15] Pursuing rapid economic growth, however, came with great environmental and social costs. Mass migration to the cities heightened the rural-urban disparity, and the focus on eastern coastal industries left the western and central regions heavily underdeveloped. According to the World Bank, China’s Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality based on income) increased from 29 percent in 1981, peaking at 49 percent in 2007, and falling to 47 percent in 2012[16]. Socially, this period produced unequal access to public services such as pensions, social insurance, education, and health care. Environmentally, rapid development took a toll on the country’s air, water, and land. It is not surprising that addressing inequality became a principal task under President Xi (2013-present). At the nineteenth National Congress of the CPC in 2017, the twice-a-decade event that determines the national policy goals and election of top leadership, Xi spoke of the new era of socialism and, with it, the evolution of the principal contradiction faced by Chinese society: As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved. What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. China has seen the basic needs of over a billion people met, has basically made it possible for people to live decent lives, and will soon bring the building of a moderately prosperous society to a successful completion. The needs to be met for the people to live better lives are increasingly broad. Not only have their material and cultural needs grown; their demands for democracy, rule of law, fairness and justice, security, and a better environment are increasing. At the same time, China’s overall productive forces have significantly improved and in many areas our production capacity leads the world. The more prominent problem is that our development is unbalanced and inadequate. This has become the main constraining factor in meeting the people’s increasing needs for a better life.[17] The reform and opening-up period is therefore seen as the pre-condition for building a modern socialist country. It is during this period when two of the three official strategic goals were achieved, ensuring that the people are have a decent standard of life and that their basic needs are met. Continuing the work of poverty alleviation and ensuring that poor people enter a ‘moderately prosperous society’ (xiaokang) in the rest of the country is a final step in this period. In the years since Xi’s speech, China has mobilised its people – specifically the poor themselves – as well as the government and the market to eliminate extreme poverty, marking a key phase in the transition to socialism.  Peasant workers till the land in an organic bamboo fungus company, which was established to help lift Longmenao, a village that is officially registered as poor, out of poverty in Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021. Part III: Poverty Alleviation Theory and Practice ⤴One Income, Two Assurances, and Three Guarantees China’s elimination of extreme poverty comes a decade ahead of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which set ‘eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty’ as its principal target.[18] While millions of Chinese people emerged from poverty during the phase of rapid economic growth, economics itself cannot explain this achievement. For this study, we spoke with Justin Lin Yifu, former chief economist of the World Bank (the first from the Global South) and founder of New Structural Economics. Lin is also a standing committee member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress National Committee and a professor at Peking University. Lin classifies two primary approaches to poverty reduction, which he calls ‘blood transfusion’ and ‘blood generation’. The former – a preferred model in Western economies – is characterised by humanitarian aid or welfare mechanisms to guarantee that basic needs are met. Meanwhile, the latter describes development-oriented poverty alleviation that creates employment and increases the incomes of the poor. These two approaches alone, however, were unable to eliminate poverty in the poorest pockets of China. According to Lin, ‘In areas that are short of natural resources, far away from the market, and have poor transportation and infrastructure, such as the “Three Regions and Three Prefectures”,[19] targeted assistance is needed’. The comprehensive concept of targeted poverty alleviation – officially implemented in 2015, concluding at the end of 2020 – was developed and innovated based on decades of domestic and international experiences. ‘China’s poverty alleviation’, Lin summarises, ‘is a growth-driven, government-led strategy that combines social support and the peasants’ own effort, features the “blood generating” or development-oriented pattern, and guarantees basic needs through social security’. Stressing the role of government leadership, he says: ‘In contrast to the rest of the world, the Chinese government has played a crucial part. Poverty eradication would not have been achieved merely through the role of the market had the government not paid great attention to the issue of the poor people’. In other words, a combination of the ‘visible’ and ‘invisible hand’, together with the mobilisation of broad sectors of society, was the hallmark of China’s poverty alleviation in this ‘targeted’ phase. China’s Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) programme can be summarised by one slogan: one income, two assurances, and three guarantees. Regarding income, the international poverty line is set by the World Bank at US$1.90 per day, measured in 2011 prices and based on the average poverty line of the world’s fifteen poorest countries. China’s poverty line was last raised to 2,300 yuan per year in 2011 (set at 2010 prices), which represents US$2.30 per day when adjusted to Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), exceeding the World Bank standard. Adjusted to 2020 prices, the annual minimum income is 4,000 yuan, while the per capita income under the targeted alleviation programme of 10,740 yuan per year is much higher.[20] Understanding that poverty cannot be addressed by income distribution alone, China’s programme takes on a multidimensional approach. First theorised by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, the concept of multidimensional poverty looks at the intersecting and complex factors associated with poverty that are not accounted for just by measuring income. Elaborating upon Sen’s work, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative adopted the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in 2010, measuring ten indicators across the three dimensions of health, education, and basic infrastructural services. Their 2020 report, launched a decade after MPI’s adoption and a decade before the Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDG) deadline, found that 1.3 billion people, or 22 percent of the world’s population, live in multidimensional poverty.[21] In comparison, according to the US$1.90-a-day poverty line, 689 million people – or 9.2 percent of the global population – lived in extreme poverty in 2017, prior to the pandemic.[22] In addition to a minimum income, China’s poverty alleviation programme ensures that five other indicators are met: the ‘two assurances’ of food and clothing and the ‘three guarantees’ of basic medical services, safe housing with drinking water and electricity, and free and compulsory education, which in China is for nine years. We spoke with Wang Sangui, dean of the National Poverty Alleviation Research Institute of Renmin University about the relationship between China’s indicators and the MPI framework: ‘Multidimensional Poverty is only seen as a research approach’, he said, ‘and so far has not been adopted by any country to measure the size of the poor populations at the national level because of its great complexity’. However, by including the five key indicators, he adds, ‘In fact, China has followed a multidimensional approach in poverty eradication’. As an expert advisor to the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, Wang helped develop the standards for China’s programme. ‘How do you classify drinking water as safe? First, the basic requirement is that there must be no shortages in water supply. Second, the source of water must not be too far, no more than twenty minutes round-trip for water retrieval. Last, the water quality must be safe, without any harmful substances. We require test reports that confirm the water quality is safe. Only then can we say that the standard is met’.  First Secretary Liu Yuanxue speaks with a local villager during routine home visits in the village of Danyang, Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021. Part IV: Targeted Poverty Alleviation ⤴Don’t Use a Grenade to Blast a Flea Targeted poverty alleviation, also known as precise poverty alleviation, was introduced for the first time during President Xi’s visit to Shibadong village in Hunan Province in November 2013. ‘Don’t use a grenade to blast a flea’, Xi advised the local government on how to address the root causes of poverty. Instead, he said, act as an embroiderer approaching an intricate design. This approach was implemented as the government strategy in 2015, guided by four questions: Who should be lifted out of poverty? Who carries out the work? What measures need to be taken to address poverty? How can evaluations be done to ensure that people remain out of poverty? Defining Poverty: Who Gets Lifted? On 28 August 2018, I came to Danyang, whose Party organisation was considered ‘weak and loose’ and whose work had not been pushed hard enough, which was why I was sent by the higher-level authorities to strengthen the building of the organisation. The organisation gave me a brief report about the villagers at first, and I started by touching base with the people to find out which households were the targets of poverty alleviation. Otherwise, the work wouldn’t be conducted properly. To get closer to the people, I had to understand human nature well […] The local people were poor for many reasons, including water shortages, low crop yields, diseases, disabilities, and the lack of education of children. Their problems and conflicts had been passed from generation to generation. Knowing who the poor are in a country of 1.4 billion people is an enormous undertaking. Recognising the limitations of a sampled-data statistical method, China moved towards a household identification system, which means getting to know every single poor person in the country, their conditions, and their needs. This was done through a combination of sending people to the villages, practising grassroots democracy, and deploying digital technologies. In 2014, 800,000 Party cadres were organised to visit and survey every household across the country, identifying 89.62 million poor people in 29.48 million households and 128,000 villages. More than two million people were then tasked to verify the data, later removing inaccurately identified cases and adding new ones.[23] While income is the primary deciding factor, housing, education, and health are also taken into consideration when listing a ‘poverty-stricken household’. Village committees, township governments, and the villagers themselves are mobilised to assess the status of each household. Public democratic appraisal meetings, for example, are held to facilitate discussions among community members about each family’s situation and whether they should be removed from or added to the poverty registration list.[24] This on-the-ground process was paired with the creation of an advanced information and management system, touching on all parts of the poverty alleviation process across the country. Big data is used to monitor the situation of each of the nearly 100 million individuals, facilitate information flow between governmental departments, and identify important poverty trends and causes.[25] Mobilising the people and gaining public support are at the heart of the effort to carry out this work. Mobilisation: Who Does the Lifting? ⤴Move Amongst the People as a Fish Swims in the Sea Record of Visit, 10 June 2019: Today I received a call from He Guoqiang. He said a door lock [in] his resettlement flat was broken. I went to his home and helped him contact the property management team and the construction crew for repairs. I took this opportunity to teach him to exercise his rights as a homeowner and to contact the property management and construction crew. He Guoqiang said the next time he encounters such a problem, he [will] know how to solve it.[26] There is no organisation without the organisers. As of June 2021, the CPC has more than 95.1 million members – 27.45 million of whom are women – and 4.9 million primary level Party organisations, which includes villagers’ committees, public institutions, government-affiliated organs and enterprises, and social organisations.[27] If the CPC were a country, it would be the sixteenth most populous in the world. The targeted phase of poverty alleviation required building relationships and trust between the Party and the people in the countryside as well as strengthening Party organisation at the grassroots level. Party secretaries are assigned to oversee the task of poverty alleviation across five levels of government, from the province, city, county, and township, down to the village. Most notably, three million carefully selected cadres were dispatched to poor villages, forming 255,000 teams that reside there.[28] Living in humble conditions for generally one to three years at a time, the teams worked alongside poor peasants, local officials, and volunteers until each household was lifted out of poverty. In this process, many cadres were unable to return home to visit families for long stretches of time; some fell ill in the harsh natural conditions of rural areas and more than 1,800 Party members and officials lost their lives in the fight against poverty.[29] The first teams were dispatched in 2013; by 2015, all poor villages had a resident team, and every poor household had an assigned cadre to help in the process of being lifted, and more importantly, of lifting themselves out of poverty.[30] At the end of 2020, the goal of eliminating extreme poverty was reached. Liu Yuanxu, a forty-seven-year-old man with a daughter in her senior year of high school, is among the Party secretaries who were sent in 2018 to Danyang, a village of 2,855 people in the southwestern province of Guizhou. Liu describes arriving in Danyang, where he does not speak the local dialect, and where 137 of the village’s 805 households were designated as poor. He was one of 52 cadres assigned to the village, each with different responsibilities. He told us about his day-to-day work: I was responsible for five poor households, but it is now for four, since one person died. Back then I visited every family on an electric bike and took care of everything for them. I kept in touch with the young people on WeChat and the elders by phone. They could call me for anything. I went to every villager group to investigate who was nice and who was difficult. I’ve resolved problems through drinks and talks with the villagers who now have a very good relationship with me. Now the government maintains a register of poor households, marginal households, and key households. Digital tools help the government know when people get sick or if those who can work are employed. We also visit the villagers every month to better understand the reality of their situation. Unlike models that rely heavily on non-governmental organisations and international assistance, China’s poverty alleviation programme draws its strength from mobilising its citizens. Cadres like Liu are an essential bridge between implementing government policy and understanding the concrete conditions and demands of the people. The more than ten million cadres and officials who have mobilised in the countryside have been essential in building public support for and confidence in the Party and the government. In 2020, Harvard University published a study, Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time, for which they interviewed 31,000 urban and rural residents between 2003 and 2016 about their support for the CPC.[31] During this period, Chinese citizens’ satisfaction with their government increased across the board from 86.1 percent to 93.1 percent. The greatest increase in government satisfaction was seen in the rural township-level areas, which increased from 43.6 percent approval to 70.2 percent approval, particularly among lowest-income residents and those from the poorer inland areas. This growing support stems from the increased accessibility and quality of health care, education, and social services, as well as from the improved responsiveness and effectiveness of local government officials. Though the study ended in 2016 before the campaign’s completion, the poverty alleviation programme and the government’s effective response to COVID-19 have continued to build public support.[32] Shortly after Wuhan emerged from the COVID-19 lockdown, York University Professor Cary Woo led a survey of 19,816 people across 31 provinces and administrative regions. Published in the Washington Post, the study found that 49 percent of respondents became more trusting of the government following its response to the pandemic, and overall trust increased to 98 percent at the national level and 91 percent at the township level.[33] Eliminating poverty and containing the pandemic can be seen as two major victories of China and its people in 2020.
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