https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMc_0gaeoBU&ab_channel=DoubleDownNews
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Hospital fire in Brazil exposes criminal neglect of workers’ lives
Brunna Machado
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/05/hosp-n05.html
An October 27 fire at a hospital in Brazil’s state of Rio de Janeiro resulted in the deaths of eight people, at least three of them COVID-19 patients. All had suffered some kind of complications after a rushed transfer to escape a blaze on the underground floor that spread dense smoke through several sections of the hospital.
Disoriented by the lack of any emergency plan, nurses, doctors and other workers were forced to improvise, even using a nearby tire store to temporarily relocate some of the patients. One of those who lost their lives was Núbia Rodrigues, 42. She was a radiologist and had been hospitalized a few days before, after having already passed through two other public health care units. She was carried out on a sheet by her colleagues and taken to another facility, but died on the way inside an ambulance. Of the 44 patients who were transferred on the day of the fire, 21 are still hospitalized.
The fact that a fire occurred at the Federal Hospital of Bonsucesso (HFB), the largest hospital complex in the state of Rio’s public health network, is the criminal outcome of the precarious conditions plaguing the whole of Brazil’s public health care system.
At the beginning of the pandemic, this same hospital was considered as a possible center for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. The facility, which has on average 1,300 hospitalizations per month, was to be adapted with about 200 new beds for COVID-19 cases, but the plan was not realized due to a lack of equipment and health care professionals.
The then Minister of Health, Nelson Teich—one of the three who has held the position this year alone—made a visit to the hospital and found that the facility was underutilized due to a lack of basic supplies and respirators. At the time, the workers staged a protest demanding the purchase of PPE (personal protective equipment) and decent working conditions. After this visit, the hospital was discarded as a COVID-19 center and was forced to face increasingly precarious conditions.
According to a survey by the Open Accounts Association, the hospital’s budget has been cut by almost 40 percent since 2010, from 218 million reais (about US$38 million) to 131 million reais (about US$23 million) per year. The deterioration of the hospital, therefore, was predictable. A survey conducted in 2019 pointed to serious flaws in the fire prevention system and “high risk of explosion” due to the overheating of two transformers.
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The failure to act on this warning, as well as the rejection of the demands made by the workers, is part of a deliberate policy of capitalist governments on both the national and a state level. This is already the fourth hospital fire in Rio de Janeiro since September of last year. And although Rio’s cases are particularly serious because of the deaths, the same problems are present in all of Brazil’s states. Since the beginning of 2020, the Sprinkler Brazil Institute has counted 45 fires in public and private health facilities throughout the country, an increase of 96 percent compared to the same period last year. And it is estimated that the real number is higher, as quickly controlled fires are often not reported.
The precarious infrastructure of the public health care system, upon which 70 percent of the population depends, has an even more tragic effect due to the coronavirus pandemic. The “fight” against the pandemic was marked by the installation of provisional and precarious sites for the treatment of COVID-19 cases, which served to systematically divert public resources, while already existing hospitals remained virtually abandoned.
Under these conditions and under the herd immunity policy promoted by President Jair Bolsonaro and the ruling class as a whole, Brazil has already recorded more than 160,000 COVID-19 deaths and over 5.5 million cases. The rate of coronavirus transmission in Brazil has risen again, according to monitoring by Imperial College (United Kingdom). Its report, released last Monday shows that the index increased to 1.01 (in August, it had fallen for the first time to below 1).
Even in view of the high number of cases and the increase in the transmission rate, the already insufficient hospital infrastructure is being dismantled. In the state of Para, some 300 workers were laid off last month after the closure of the Castanhal Regional Hospital. The workers responded with a protest on October 15, and again on October 28, after not even receiving their overdue salaries and severance pay.
In addition, most of the temporary beds in different states, including in the field hospitals that had been set up in soccer stadiums, have been deactivated, overloading other health facilities.
After the fire at the Bonsucesso Federal Hospital, the administration announced that the hospital would be completely closed and that all of its employees would be placed on vacation. The hospital workers responded with a protest, arguing that at least the wings not affected by the fire should continue to function. After that, the administration reversed itself, deciding to partially reopen the hospital.
Each of these cases demonstrates that the defense of basic health care and the fight against the deactivation of beds, the cutting off of resources and a state of deterioration in which Brazilian public hospitals are literally burning can only be guaranteed by the independent action of the working class. The mass infections and deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare the preexisting condition of the complete incompatibility of capitalism with the essential social needs of the working class, including free quality health care.
QAnon Candidate Wins A Seat In Congress
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcljq0rHLt4&ab_channel=GrahamElwood
Why the Supreme Court Probably Won’t Help Trump’s Reelection Fate
The president’s vow to take his unsubstantiated election claims to the highest court was met with confusion.
November 4, 2020 Josh Gerstein POLITICO
https://portside.org/2020-11-04/why-supreme-court-probably-wont-help-trumps-reelection-fate
President Donald Trump’s drive to have the Supreme Court ensure his reelection faces serious obstacles — both legal and practical — that could wind up leaving him empty-handed.
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Trump declared early Wednesday during a speech to supporters at the White House. “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list, OK? ... We will win this and as far as I’m concerned we already have won it.”
Legal experts from both parties said they were somewhat baffled by Trump’s remarks about asking the high court to stop voting. Even interpreting his statement to mean halting vote counting was confusing because under any scenario, vote counting in some states was sure to continue for several days after the election.
Asked to parse Trump’s comment, longtime GOP election lawyer Jan Baran said: “I have no idea—and I don’t think he does either.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, the president still had a path to victory, but it had significantly narrowed after Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden clinched Arizona and increased his gains in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump campaign officials had little to say Wednesday about the Supreme Court, although they did announce plans to seek a recount in Wisconsin, where Trump was running about 20,000 votes behind Biden.
Baran suggested that was a longshot, judging by history. He said he was unaware of any statewide race where a recount moved close to that many votes.
“There are legal mechanisms, but you need some evidence and some facts, as well as legal arguments,” Baran said. “Twenty thousand votes? Who knows what you may find under the rug or behind the couch that does pop up. It’s possible.”
The only case about vote-counting deadlines that could be teed up at the high court right now is from Pennsylvania, where Democrats and Republicans have fought over an extension to accept mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day for three days past the election.
Indeed, on Wednesday evening, Trump’s campaign formally asked to intervene in petitions on that issue that are already pending at the Supreme Court.
“Given last night’s results, the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States,” the campaign’s motion said. “And this Court, not the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, should have the final say on the relevant and dispositive legal questions.”
The court gave the existing parties on both sides until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond. The campaign’s filing appeared to be a precursor to Trump‘s asking the high court for relief in Pennsylvania, such as a halt to further vote counting, but so far no request to the justices to do that has come.
Yet even if Trump somehow were able to succeed in stopping the state from finishing its vote count, the state’s 20 electoral votes would not enough to put him over the top in the Electoral College.
So the president would likely have to broaden the legal fight to at least one other state to hold onto his job. It’s not immediately clear which state would be a fruitful target for him.
Most of the other states that have seen recent legal jockeying at the high court already appear to be in Trump’s column (North Carolina, for instance). While Trump might benefit from a recount in Wisconsin, Democrats lost a court battle over late-arriving ballots there, so it’s unclear what new litigation could be filed to cut off the ballot tabulation, or how it would reach the Supreme Court.
Another, perhaps insurmountable, legal challenge for Trump is that even if the Supreme Court ultimately rules that a change like Pennsylvania’s three-day was unconstitutional, there are signs a majority of the court could order those ballots to be counted anyway.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate on how the Court would rule, but the argument that voters relied on the rules in place on and before Election Day – and should therefore have their votes counted – is very strong,” said Dan Tokaji, dean of the University of Wisconsin Law School.
The best indication of the uphill battle Trump faces may be the Supreme Court’s approach early last month to a legal fight over a federal court order that blocked South Carolina’s requirement that a witness sign absentee ballots. Republicans prevailed in that battle, as the high court reinstated the usual rule.
However, the Supreme Court’s decision came with a seemingly minor caveat that voters who’d already sent in their absentee ballots without a witness signature wouldn’t have the absence of that held against them. The justices even added—seemingly out of thin air—a two-day grace period from their decision to allow those unwitnessed ballots to reach election officials.
In the Oct. 5 order, three GOP-appointed justices noted their objection to that carve-out: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. It appears that the five other justices — the three liberals, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh — formed a majority to create a safe harbor for voters who skipped the witness requirement based on a good-faith belief that the rule had been waived for this election.
The Supreme Court didn’t explain its rationale for the grace period in the South Carolina case or for not making its ruling enforcing the witness requirement retroactive, but lawyers say the most likely explanation is the notion of “reliance interests” — the idea that voters shouldn’t be penalized for doing what they were told was permissible.
If the court extends that principle to the Pennsylvania case, that would mean late-arriving ballots should be recognized because voters might have mailed them on Election Day thinking they’d be counted if received in the following days.
“The legal posture of the case … cuts against the Supreme Court ruling these ballots invalid,” said New York University law professor Richard Pildes. “That’s because the court had two opportunities to stop voters, but did not, from believing their mailed-in ballots were valid as long as they arrived on or before Nov. 6.”
Newly minted Justice Amy Coney Barrett wasn’t on the court yet when the justices ruled on the South Carolina dispute last month. But if the pattern established in that case holds, it wouldn’t matter whether Barrett aligns herself with the court’s most conservative bloc or throws in with the chief justice and Kavanaugh. Either way, Trump may not have the majority he’d need to throw out late-arriving votes.
Of course, one big “if” in this scenario is the presumption that the court would follow the rule it set in the South Carolina case. Roberts, Kavanaugh or, less likely, one of the liberal justices, might waver or find some fine distinction, particularly if the outcome of the election seems to ride on the high court’s ruling.
Another big “if” is whether ruling late ballots in or out could make a difference for Trump in the Keystone State. Some legal experts doubt it, especially given all the attention in recent weeks to postal delays and the need for ballots to arrive on time.
“I would expect the number of these ballots to be small, much less than some might think,” Pildes said. “Because Pennsylvania has been in the crosshairs of both campaigns from the start, voters were not just highly mobilized, but voting early, in person or by returning those ballots.”
Dems Screw Progressives And Lose To Mitch McConnell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_fdRsQOcJc&ab_channel=GrahamElwood
The Relevance of Marxist Critique
In this book, writes reviewer Beeber, the author "unapologetically asserts the continued relevance of Marxism, and in particular the continued necessity for a class-based critical approach to literature."
November 4, 2020 Matthew Beeber AGAINST THE CURRENT
https://portside.org/2020-11-04/relevance-marxist-critique
Marxist Literary Criticism Today
Barbara Foley
Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745338835
IN 2001, THE late Argentinean philosopher Ernesto Laclau and Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, foundational proponents of what would become known as “post-Marxism,” asserted the following premise:
“In the mid-1970s, Marxist theorization had clearly reached an impasse. After an exceptionally rich and creative period in the 1960s, the limits of that expansion — which had its epicentre in Althusserianism, but also in a renewed interest in Gramsci and in the theoreticians of the Frankfurt School — were only too visible. There was an increasing gap between the realities of contemporary capitalism and what Marxism could legitimately subsume under its own categories.”
The two go on to observe that:
“This situation, on the whole, provoked two types of attitude: either to negate the changes, and to retreat unconvincingly to an orthodox bunker; or to add, in an ad hoc way, descriptive analyses of the new trends which were simply juxtaposed — without integration — to a theoretical body which remained largely unchanged.”*
Almost 20 years later (and more than 30 years after Laclau and Mouffe first formulated their position), the debate continues over the usefulness of “orthodox” Marxism — as opposed to any number of post- or neo- Marxisms like that of Laclau and Mouffe. Barbara Foley, Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Rutgers University-Newark and a specialist on African-American and proletarian literature, unapologetically asserts the continued relevance of Marxism, and in particular the continued necessity for a class-based critical approach to literature, in her recent book, Marxist Literary Criticism Today.
Some critics will no doubt consider her position a “retreat” to an “orthodox bunker” — indeed the introduction to the volume makes clear its intentions to return to the “basics” of Marxism. As a whole, however, the book manages to depart from the dichotomous paths described by Laclau and Mouffe, charting a model for the “integration” of orthodox Marxism with our contemporary economic and social order.
While steadfast in its determination that Marxism still provides the necessary tools for the analysis of our present moment, the volume represents more than mere retrenchment. It addresses head-on many of the critiques made of Marxism’s limitations, offering rebuttals to such critiques that draw on a wide range of scholarship.
Entry into the Conversation
In its prologue and throughout many offset explanatory text boxes, Marxist Literary Criticism Today puts forth a coherent political position, representing a valid entry into discourse surrounding the continued relevance of Marxist theory.
Foley argues (against the likes of Laclau and Mouffe, who are referenced directly as foils), that neoliberal or “late” capitalism is still capitalism, that a class-based analysis is thus as necessary as ever, and that “it is those who have given up on the class-based critique of capital who are behind the times.” (xii)
Foley’s claim for the continued relevance of Marxist critique derives from an analysis of our current neoliberal moment as continuous within — rather than a departure from — capitalism as an overarching economic structure. We are, according to Foley “still very much in the longue duree […] of capitalism,” such that the critique of capitalism provided by Marxist analysis is as relevant today as it was during Marx’s time.
Working within what many would consider an orthodox Marxist framework, the goal of the book, and of its version of Marxist literary criticism, is to “contribute to the project of constructing what Antonio Gramsci called an alternative hegemony: an oppositional common-sense understanding of the ways in which artistic production and reception can either foster or fetter revolutionary change.” (124)
The offset text boxes answer what could be considered FAQs of Marxism, socratically voicing and responding to possible critiques. These text boxes do much of the work towards making the book’s topics relevant to today.
Foley does not shy away from such controversial topics as “What does it mean to say that class is the ‘primary’ analytical category for explaining social inequality and leveraging revolutionary social change? What about sexism and racism and modes of domination, and gender and race as modes of identity?”
Or, “What is the difference between chattel and free labor? Are they features of qualitatively different modes of production, or can they exist within a single social formation?;” or “Is Marxist value theory obsolete in the era of the internet?”
Many of these sidebars address questions that might indeed be asked by an undergraduate student, whereas others address questions of Marxism’s limitations which would more likely be raised by those already working within a Marxist framework.
The responses to these questions — such as the assertion that class, as an analytical tool, is in fact not an “axis of oppression” on par with gender or race but rather an “ur” category of Marxist analysis (which of course then includes the other two) — follow from Foley’s premise that the locus of contemporary oppression is not “multi-faceted,” but “unitary,” and “situated … in capital.” (xi)
Foley openly advocates for communism, yet does not engage in a defense of past or current regimes who identify with that term. The book makes clear that its interests lie in the idea of communism as theorized by Marx and Engels, not any historical substantiation of it. Indeed, the volume gives a wide berth to historical questions regarding the achievements or atrocities of past self-described communist regimes.
Despite this, Foley does not dismiss the “huge challenges” that “are posed not only by the coercive and ideological power of current elites but also by certain historical limitations in the legacy inherited from Marx and Engels themselves — as well as by problems inherited from past movements carried forward under the banner of one or another version of Marxism.” (xv)
An explanatory text box rhetorically asks, “Why do I use the term ‘communism’ rather than ‘socialism’ to denote the classless society superseding capitalism?” Foley responds by clarifying that despite their seeming interchangeability (even a return to Marx does not clear up the distinction, as he used both terms inconsistently), in the vocabulary of today, socialism often denotes a reformist position, one which many consider compatible with aspects of capitalism.
Foley writes that “countries designating themselves as socialist (the Soviet Union and China figure prominently here) retained so many features of capitalist inequality — including nationalist politics, unequal wages, and continuing divisions between mental and manual labor — that they reverted to capitalism.” (9)
Foley here both rejects a stagist approach — in which socialism is seen as the first stage towards achieving communism — and also any reformist version of socialism which could exist within capitalism. She simultaneously, if somewhat tacitly, argues that historical regimes such as the Soviet Union did not in fact achieve communism as Marx envisioned it, thus removing the burden from contemporary Marxist critics to either defend or condemn them.
Lit Crit Primer
Informed by the continued necessity of Marxist critique, the main text of Marxist Literary Criticism Today puts into practice the politics it advocates for in its prologue, explaining the basics of class-based criticism and demonstrating its applicability to a wide range of contemporary literature.
The book fills a need for such a volume, being the first entrant into that field since Terry Eagleton (Marxism and Literary Criticism, 1976) and Raymond Williams (Marxism and Literature, 1977). The first half serves as a foundational course in Marxist studies more broadly (not limited to its application to literary criticism).
This is both a primer on the work of Marx and Engels and on Marxist studies since Marx, akin to books such as Perry Anderson’s Considerations on Western Marxism. Foley divides this first section into three major areas of Marxist studies: historical materialism, political economy, and ideology.
The first, “Historical Materialism,” draws mainly from Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto and from the famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, giving a general overview of Marx’s philosophy, including his reformulation of Hegelian dialectics, the distinction between materialism and idealism, and the relation between base and superstructure.
The following section, “Political Economy,” offers an overview of Marx’s critique in Capital, defining key concepts such as commodities, surplus value, and alienation.
The third section, “Ideology,” begins by explaining that Marx himself uses the term in three distinct senses: 1) “illusory consciousness,” 2) “the standpoint of a class,” and 3) “socially necessary misunderstanding.”
Marx’s multifaceted use of “ideology” as a term — and his incomplete theorization of it as a concept — has contributed to its being one of the richer fields of interrogation by 20th-century Marxist thinkers. Foley charts the development of ideology critique, giving concise overviews of Lukács on reification, Althusser on interpellation, and Gramsci on hegemony.
In particular, the focus on hegemony powerfully anchors the volume as a whole, emphasizing the role of literature — and of the critique of literature — in its “capacity to encompass a wide range of modes of resistance to ruling-class hegemony.” (83)
The second half of Foley’s book directly addresses the ways that Marxist analytics can be put to use in a practice of literary criticism, and in turn how literary criticism can play a role in challenging ruling-class hegemony.
Foley divides this half of the book into three sections, the first attempting to define literature itself, the second addressing many current strains of Marxist literary criticism, and the third giving several examples of Marxist analyses of classic literary texts.
The first of these makes a convincing argument for the need to conceive of literature as a bounded category of cultural production, and usefully articulates the political implications of how we define this category. The book’s attempt to actually provide a definition of “literature” is, however, less convincing, comprised of thirteen characteristics of which many are either vague or subjective, such as “greatness” or “depth.”
The strength of the second half of the book lies in the “Marxist Literary Criticism” section, in which Foley both traces dominant strains of Marxist critique of bourgeois literature (the majority of which expresses the ideology of the ruling class), but also addresses the role of critique regarding overtly revolutionary texts.
Foley begins with Paul Ricoeur’s concept of a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” providing a list of “maneuvers” of which the Marxist critic is rightly suspicious, such as dehistoricism (capitalism has always been the dominant economic mode) and naturalization (hierarchical social structures are natural).
Another major strain of Marxist criticism, “symptomatic reading,” attempts to locate what Fredric Jameson calls the “political unconscious” of a text, such that we “view the given text as a mediation — indeed, a series of mediations — of the contradictions shaping the world from which it emerged.” (131)
Foley also responds to critics who have questioned Marxist critique for a number of reasons, allowing for the validity of some (e.g. critical techniques such as symptomatic reading are better suited to analyzing bourgeois literature than to overtly political writing), while vehemently rejecting others.
In particular, Foley responds to claims from Rita Felsky and others that Marxist criticism ignores the “‘joy, hope, love and optimism’ embedded in great works of literature,” arguing that “this accusation constitutes little more than an updating of Cold War-era formalism, extending the radical-baiting historically directed at specifically Marxist criticism to the entire domain of politically charged cultural critique.” (136)
Closing Arguments
In the book’s final section, “Marxist Pedagogy,” Foley performs Marxist readings of a range of texts, providing both useful examples to students and a formidable resource to teachers of Marxist criticism.
The section offers pairs of poems organized by themes such as “art,” “nature,” and “alienation,” often putting canonical bourgeois texts in conversation with overtly radical works.
In one particularly effective example, Langston Hughes’ “Johannesburg Mines” (1925) serves as the foil to Archibald MacLeish’s oft-taught “Ars Poetica” (1926).
Whereas “Ars Poetica” argues that “A poem should not mean / But be,” suggesting its relevance purely to the aesthetic realm, Hughes’s poem directly addresses the political, specifically the conditions of the “240,000 natives working / In the Johannesburg mines.”
Yet while Hughes asserts that poetry should in fact “do” things in the political realm, his poem “interrogates the limits of literary representation,” asking, “What kind of poem / Would you make of that?” Thus, while both poems ultimately question the political utility of art, MacLeish’s serves as a condemnation of poetry which attempts any kind of political engagement, while Hughes’s on the other hand laments poetry’s limitations in fully expressing political conditions.
Foley contextualizes her readings of both poems, explaining that “In the hands of the New Critics — who, we will recall, elevated formalism to the level of political and cultural orthodoxy during the Cold War — over the decades MacLeish’s poem would come to stand in for a critique of the entire tradition of socially committed poetry that had exercised widespread influence during and beyond the Depression years.” (222)
Through such pairings, Foley demonstrates the utility of Marxist criticism in understanding both “politically engaged” work as well as art that participates in the pretense of an apolitical “art for art’s sake.”
Overall, Foley makes a convincing argument both for the “continued need for a classless future,” and for the continued relevance of Marxist critique in achieving this project, against post-Marxists and others who would suggest that Marxism has become rather “part of the problem.”
In its capacity as a literary criticism primer, the book practices its politics, demonstrating the applicability of Marxist critique to a wide range of cultural production, both contemporary and historic.
In so doing, Foley avoids the twin accusations of Laclau and Mouffe — either blind retrenchment to orthodoxy or ad-hoc application — offering a model for the elusive integration of orthodox Marxism with the present social and economic landscape.
Laclau and Mouffe published their seminal work, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, in 1985. A second edition was published in 2001 with a new introduction, from which this quotation was taken (viii).
CAPITALISM’S WORST NIGHTMARE
By Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work.
November 4, 2020
| RESISTANCE REPORT
https://popularresistance.org/capitalisms-worst-nightmare/
On this week’s show, Prof. Wolff explores what major social changes will flow from today’s combination of major economic crash and the viral pandemic (capitalism’s worst nightmare). To answer, we consider how European feudalism changed after its 14th century combination of economic decline and the bubonic plague. The two big changes then were (1) switching from a decentralized to a strong state, monarchical feudalism and (2) transition from feudalism to capitalism. The two big parallel changes now are also (1) switching to a strong state capitalism and (2) transition from capitalism to a worker-coop based economy.
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