Social Self-Defense Against the Impending Trump Coup

 

Written by Jeremy Brecher and first published at Labor Network for Sustainability 

President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins the election. What is to be done if Trump loses the election but refuses to concede? The purpose of this commentary is to stimulate discussion and preparation for how to overcome such a Trump coup. 

Even before the 2016 election, Donald Trump hinted that if he lost he might not accept the outcome. Now, far behind in the polls, Trump is taking action to disrupt the 2020 election and laying obvious groundwork for refusing to leave office if he loses. As this threat has moved from a hypothetical concern to an immediate fear, the media have been filled with stories about Trumpite plans for red state legislatures to overturn popular votes, destroy mail ballots, and send in the military to quell demonstrators defending the vote. 

But reports have also begun appearing about plans to defend the ballot and resist a Trump Coup d’état – an “executive usurpation” sometimes referred to as a “self-coup.”(1) This commentary gives a brief historical background on the effective use of “people power” to contest coups and stolen elections and reviews recent writing and organizing against a Trump Coup. It presents resistance to a Trump Coup not as primarily a matter of Biden vs. Trump or Democrats vs. Republicans, but rather as Social Self-Defense — a defense of society against an attack on the very things that make our life together possible.(2) 

Anti-Coups Have Succeeded 

Tyrannical regimes from Serbia to the Philippines to Brazil and many other places have been brought down by “people power” — nonviolent revolts that made society ungovernable and led to regime change. While the U.S. has a strong tradition of social movements based on people power, it does not have a tradition of using mass action and general strikes for the defense of democracy. However, in other countries where democratic institutions have been so weakened or eliminated that they provide no alternative to tyranny, such methods have emerged and been used effectively. 

There is now an extensive literature analyzing popular resistance to subversion of elections and other forms of coup d’état. The pioneer of such research was theorist and historian of nonviolence Gene Sharp. His Waging Nonviolent Struggle provides extensive analysis and many case studies of effective nonviolent resistance; his The Anti-Coup focuses in on the use of these methods against illegal seizures of government power.(3) It proposes such guidelines as: 

• Repudiate the coup and denounce its leaders as illegitimate 
• Regard all decrees and orders from the coup leaders contradicting established law as illegal and refuse to obey them 
• Keep all resistance strictly nonviolent – refuse to be provoked into violence 
• Noncooperate with the coup leaders in all ways

Steven Zunes’ Civil Resistance Against Coups analyzes the resistance to twelve coups and provides an expanded theoretical framework.(4) Sharp and Zunes provide invaluable background for anyone who contemplates resisting a possible Trump coup. Here are two examples that involve popular resistance to coups that utilized stolen elections: 

In 1988, despite the circumventing of electoral laws, repression of universities and media, and ethnic cleansing, Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic was still holding elections of a sort. An activist group called Otpor formed around the goal of driving Milosevic from power and began hundreds of small actions of resistance around the country to counter pervasive fear of the regime. 

Its plan was that activists would compel the regime to call elections; they would create massive turnout around a united opposition candidate; they would join other nongovernmental organizations in carefully monitoring election results so they could document their victory; and they would use mass noncompliance – leading up to a general strike – if and when Milosevic refused to step down. 

In 2000, Otpor pushed 18 of Serbia’s squabbling opposition parties to form a coalition to support a unity candidate, promising to deliver 500,000 votes to the unity candidate but threatening to put 100,000 protesters at the door of any politician who betrayed the coalition. As elections approached, the regime called Otpor an “illegal terrorist organization”; police raided its offices and shut down independent radio and TV stations; each day an average of seven activists were arrested. 

Meanwhile, the opposition organized ten thousand election monitors. They announced exit polls showing Milosevic had been defeated by a 50% to 35% margin. Instead of accepting the results, Milosevic refused to leave office and demanded a run-off election. 

Otpor announced a deadline for Milosevic to concede and 200,000 people demonstrated in Belgrade. The opposition called on the population throughout the country to “perform any acts of civil disobedience they have at their disposal.” Miners struck; TV and radio stations opened their airwaves to opposition voices.  As the deadline approached, cars and trucks filled the highways heading toward Belgrade. 

Police put up roadblocks and were issued orders to shoot, but seeing the size of the convoys they abandoned their barricades. Half-a-million people gathered in Belgrade. Police fired tear gas, but when the crowd stood its ground riot police began running away or joining the crowd. The opposition candidate declared victory and Milosevic accepted his defeat. 

There are many other cases where popular action has forestalled or reversed efforts to subvert the outcome of a democratic election. After the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. in 1983, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos met growing protests. 

Marcos called a presidential election to be held in February, 1986. Aquino’s widow Corazon Aquino was backed by all major opposition parties. Marcos’ campaign included vote-buying and the murder of more than 70 opposition workers. On election day casting of fake ballots and falsification of returns was widely witnessed. 

Marcos claimed victory, but Mrs. Aquino met with opposition leaders and proposed a long nonviolent campaign of what she dubbed “people power.” Top military officers resigned, withdrew support from Marcos, recognized Aquino as the legitimate winner, and fled to military camps in Manilla. The city’s Roman Catholic Church leader appealed on nationwide radio for people to nonviolently protect the officers and prevent bloodshed. 

By midnight 50,000 surrounded the camps; two days later it was more than a million. Marcos ordered tanks and armored transports to attack. Nuns knelt in front of the tanks and priests climbed on them and led a million protesters – plus soldiers – in prayer. The troops turned back. Next day Marcos ordered another assault, but the commanding officer ordered his troops to return to their base. The military rebels announced that ninety percent of the Armed Forces had defected. Large crowds took over the government television station. 

The next day Marcos fled the country and Aquino was inaugurated president. Ever after mass nonviolent direct action has been known around the world as “People power.”(5)

How the Trump Coup Is Unfolding 

This summer a group called the Transition Integrity Project held a series of “war games” with more than 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts to review possible scenarios for the upcoming election and presidential transition. The result: 

We assess with a high degree of likelihood that November’s elections will be marked by a chaotic legal and political landscape. We also assess that President Trump is likely to contest the result by both legal and extra-legal means, in an attempt to hold onto power. Recent events, including the President’s own unwillingness to commit to abiding by the results of the election, the Attorney General’s embrace of the President’s groundless electoral fraud claims, and the unprecedented deployment of federal agents to put down leftwing protests, underscore the extreme lengths to which President Trump may be willing to go in order to stay in office. 

Their likely scenarios included: Trump’s refusal to concede; Attorney General William Barr opening investigation of vote-by-mail fraud allegations and Democratic ties to antifa; and rival selection of pro-Trump electoral college slates by Republican state legislatures. Meanwhile Trump would call for armed supporters to challenge pro-Biden demonstrators, leading to multiple killings of demonstrators; Trump says he will invoke the Insurrection Act to teach anti-American terrorists a lesson. All this before Thanksgiving. 

Except in the case of a big Biden win, each scenario “reached the brink of catastrophe, with massive disinformation campaigns, violence in the streets and a constitutional impasse.” In two of the scenarios there was no agreement on the winner by Inauguration Day.(6) 

An extended article in The Atlantic by Barton Gellman released in late September presented evidence that Trump and Republican officials are already laying the groundwork for such scenarios. The disruption of the Post Office and the plans to intimidate voters and prevent full vote counting are already under way. Gellman maintains that after election day, “Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede,” and that he may “obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in the Congress.”

Preparations are already being made for red state legislators to replace elected members of the Electoral College with their own appointees. Barton spells out in detail this and many other strategies available and likely to be used to prevent a losing President Trump from being forced to leave office.(7)

 How to Overcome a Trump Coup 

In late September, four movement activists and experts on civil resistance issued a manual called Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy. Reminiscent of the Indivisible manual that helped launch the resistance to Trump in 2016, it presents a detailed plan for locally-based resistance to a Trump Coup.(8) It lays out various scenarios in which Trump refuses to leave office. It calls for forming community-based “election protection” groups. These can start immediately with meetings by a small core group that develops a response plan and recruits others to participate in it. 

These groups will “hold the line” that all votes must be counted; all irregularities must be investigated impartially and remedied; and election results must be respected, regardless of who wins. Public officials can be called on in advance to state their commitment to these principles. Violation of these “Red Lines” by Trump or other officials will trigger these groups into action. 

The guide provides sample meeting agendas, templates for “Power Maps” of forces to influence, tactics “brainstorming sheets,” and other planning tools. It outlines targeted action to “undermine the pillars of support” for an illegal Trump regime. It calls for mass popular mobilization based on disciplined nonviolence because “violence will backfire badly against the side that uses it.” 

It discusses tactics including displaying symbols of protest; engaging in demonstrations, marches, and nonviolent blockades; strikes of all kinds; deliberate work slowdowns; boycotts of all kinds; divestment; refusing to pay certain fees, bills, taxes, or other costs; or refusal to observe certain expected social norms or behaviors. 

Trade unionists Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jose La Luz have made a related proposal for organized labor to establish “pro-democracy volunteer brigades” in preparation for the election. 

We need volunteers who will assist with voter registration; mobilize in large numbers should law enforcement and right-wing militias show up at polling places in order to intimidate voters; block the right-wing from challenging legitimate voters and ballots; and lay the groundwork for massive civil disobedience should the Trump administration attempt to forestall the elections and/or refuse to recognize the results.(9)

Organizing So Far Against a Trump Coup 

The Trump presidency has been an era of mass resistance, an upwelling of direct action that came to be known as the Trump Resistance or simply The Resistance. A social science organization called the Crowd Counting Consortium listed more than eighty-seven hundred protests with six to nine million participants in the first year of the Trump administration, 90 percent opposing Trump’s agenda.(10) The Black Lives Matter protests following the 2020 murder of George Floyd constituted the largest mass uprising in the U.S. in half a century with an estimated 15 to 26 million participants.(11) The base for contesting a Trump Coup is already in motion. 

At the start of September, a coalition of 50 organizations called the Fight Back Table, which includes Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, Color of Change, Indivisible, and MoveOn, established a post-election planning vehicle called the Democracy Defense Nerve Center. Taking off from the Transition Integrity Project war games, they have begun to chart out what it would take to stand up a multi-state communications arm to fight disinformation, a training program for nonviolent civil disobedience, and the underpinnings of what one official described as “mass public unrest.” 

They began to struggle with such questions as how do you maintain sustained strikes and occupations and what do you do if armed right-wing militias show up at polling places?(12)

A number of other groups have been mobilizing to forestall or overcome a Trump coup. Protect the Results, a joint project of Indivisible and Stand Up America supported by 80 other groups, is planning mass mobilization in more than 1,000 locations.(13) Keep Our Republic is organizing to support a “civic creed” to “Let all citizens vote. Let all votes be counted. Let the count stand.” 

The group Peoples Strike has issued a Pledge of Resistance committing to occupy civic squares on Wednesday, November 4th, to occupy state capitols on Saturday, November 7th, and to engage in “strategic rolling strikes” thereafter. No doubt other preparations are under way as well. 

Other sectors of society are also beginning to consider what their responsibilities will be if Trump refuses to concede electoral defeat. On September 25 AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released this statement about the post-election transition: 

The AFL-CIO categorically rejects all threats to the peaceful transition of power. The labor movement simply will not allow any breach of the U.S. Constitution or other effort to deny the will of the people. Union members across the political spectrum are united in our fundamental belief that the votes of the American people must always determine the presidency. America’s workers will continue to be steadfast in defense of our democracy in the face of President Trump’s antics, and we stand ready to do our part to ensure his defeat in this election is followed by his removal from office.(14) 

A recent New York Times article reported that: 

senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism.(15)

Several Pentagon officials said there could be resignations among many of Mr. Trump’s senior generals, starting at the top with chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley, should troops be ordered into the streets at the time of the election. As we have seen in the opposition to the Serbian and Philippine electoral coups, the role of various sectors and levels of the military – from the brass to the privates — can be critical. 

But as revealed by the top brass’ second thoughts after the military was called in to provide Trump a photo op confrontation in Lafayette Square during a June Black Lives Matter demonstration, they are most likely to come to a sense of their responsibilities when they are called on to suppress peaceful protestors in the interests of a tyrant. 

Social Self-Defense 

Resisting the rise of tyranny will no doubt require sacrifice. After all, we are dealing with an aspiring tyrant who lionizes someone who shoots down demonstrators in the street. But that sacrifice will not be primarily on behalf of one political party vs. another, of Democrats vs. Republicans. It will be a defense of democracy – defense of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

Beyond that, it is the protection of that which makes our life together on earth possible. It is defense of the human rights of all people; of the conditions of our earth and its climate that make our life possible; of the constitutional principle that government must be accountable to law; of global cooperation to provide a secure future for our people and planet; and of our ability to live together in our communities, our country, and our world. It is a threat to all of us as members of society. Overcoming a Trump Coup is Social Self-Defense. 

Notes 

1.     From the Spanish autogolpe, used to describe cases in Latin America in the early 1960s. Sharp and Jenkins, Anti-Coup, p. 6. https://novact.org/2012/09/the-anti-coup-bruce-jenkins-and-gene-sharp/?lang=en.

2.     The term “Social Self-Defense” has its origin in the Polish Committee for Social Self-Defense which led to the creation of the Solidarity trade union and ultimately the dissolution of Poland’s Communist dictatorship. I have used it before to characterize the Trump Resistance. Jeremy Brecher, “Social Self-Defense: Protecting People and Planet against Trump and Trumpism,” https://www.labor4sustainability.org/uncategorized/social-self-defense-protecting-people-and-planet-against-trump-and-trumpism/.

3.     Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle (Boston: Porter Sargent, 2005).  Gene Sharp & Bruce Jenkins, The Anti-Coup (Boston: The Albert Einstein Institution). Sharp’s magisterial three-volume The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston: Porter Sargent) lays out how and why nonviolent direct action is able to work.

4.     Steven Zunes, Civil Resistance Against Coups: A Comparative and Historical Perspective (ICNC Monograph Series) https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Stephen-Zunes-Monograph_Final.pdf.

5.     Joshua Paulson, “People Power Against the Philippine Dictator – 1986,” in Gene Sharp, Waging Nonviolent Struggle (Boston: Porter Sargent, 2005), Ibid.

6.     “Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition,” Transition Integrity Project, August 3, 2020. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7013152/Preventing-a-Disrupted-Presidential-Election-and.pdf and  Rosa Brooks, “What’s the worst that could happen? The election will likely spark violence – and a constitutional crisis,” Washington Post, September 3, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/09/03/trump-stay-in-office/?arc404=true.

7.     Barton Gellman, “What If Trump Refuses to Concede?,” The Atlantic, pre-released in late September from November, 2020 issue. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/ Much of the same material is covered and confirmed with additional details in David Smith, “Recipe for Chaos,” The Guardian, September 27, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/27/recipe-for-chaos-2020-election-threatens-snap-us-already-pushed-limit.

8.     Hardy Merriman, Ankur Asthana, Marium Navid, Kifah Shah. Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy. version 1.1. 2020.  http://holdthelineguide.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Hold-The-Line_-A-Guide-to-Defending-Democracy.pdf.

9.     Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Jose Alejandro La Luz, “Organized Labor and the ‘Cold Civil War,’” Portside, September 17, 2020. https://portside.org/2020-09-17/organized-labor-and-cold-civil-war.

10.  The Trump Resistance and other mass opposition to Trump and Trumpism is recounted in Jeremy Brecher, Strike! Revised, Expanded, and Updated Edition (Oakland CA: PM Press, 2020) Chapter 12, “Harbingers.” https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1085.

11.  Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html.

12.  Sam Stein, “The Left Secretly Preps for MAGA Violence After Election Day,” The Daily Beast, September 8, 2020. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-left-secretly-preps-for-violence-after-election-day . Developing efforts against a Trump Coup are also described in Sasha Abramsky, “Is Trump Planning a Coup d’État?,” The Nation, September 7, 2020. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-coup-elections-gop/.

13.  Sam Stein.

14.  Richard Trumka, “We Will Not Tolerate Any Constitutional Breach,” _AFL-CIO, September 25, 2020.  https://aflcio.org/press/releases/trumka-we-will-not-tolerate-any-constitutional-breach.

15.  Jennifer Steinhauer and Helene Cooper, “At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military into Election Unrest,” New York Times, September 25, 2020. https://portside.org/2020-09-25/pentagon-fears-grow-trump-will-pull-military-election-unrest.

Open Letter to Communists of The Whole World: Total Class War Is Coming

Written by Jehu Eaves of Charley2U. This was sent by email to me and many other left activists worldwide, with an appeal to share far and wide.

We are urgently calling for a shift in the strategy of all communists that takes into account the new reality created by the emergency measures imposed by the state on the capitalist accumulation process. Because of this pandemic, the state has been forced to shut down the capitalist accumulation process. Workers are off the job not because of a general strike, but because the state has closed all non-essential businesses. 

There are millions of workers who are now set free from productive employment; they are unemployed. We need to fight to convert this huge mass of unemployment into free time for every member of society. The alternative will be total class war, the likes of which has never been seen in the whole of the history of capitalism. It will unfold against the backdrop of extreme deprivation and barbarous competition for jobs among the working class as the state tries desperately to re-establish the old relations of production.

It is essential that prominent communist thinkers today take the lead in urging communists worldwide to shift their focus to the urgent need for a radical reduction of hours of labor. This will be necessary if we are to prevent savage competition among the proletarians over jobs when nation states attempt to restart the capitalist accumulation process with billions still unemployed.

The failure of communists to take urgent action right now will result in unnecessary suffering by the working class of every country.

1.

The pandemic public health emergency is NOT a crisis. According to Marx, “crises are always but momentary and forcible solutions of the existing contradictions” within the mode of production. They arise from the working out of the contradictions within the mode of production itself. This emergency is obviously external to the mode of production. Based on reports, it began with the emergence of a viral infection of unknown origin in the People’s Republic of China, which rapidly spread to engulf most of the world market. The pandemic soon forced most nation states to take aggressive public health measures to contain it. 

Among these measures were so-called social distancing to slow the spread of the virus. These measures led states to close down many so-called non-essential business operations and confine citizens to their homes.

The public health measures thus interrupted both the sale of labor power and the circulation of capital. To implement a necessary public health measure to contain the spread of a deadly disease, nation states were compelled to interrupt the global capitalist accumulation process itself; they were forced to shut it down. 

Now, some may think the mode of production can be restarted. We question this assumption. It is not as simple as they think to restart the capitalist accumulation process. 

For one thing, no one knows the value of anything. Capital is value in motion, self-expanding value. What is the value of capital that is no longer self-expanding? What is the value of labor power that cannot be sold at any wage? These questions are not settled on a spreadsheet, but in a competitive struggle between and among classes. When people are told to go back to work, that competitive struggle will begin. It likely will not end with the restoration of the normal operation of the capitalist mode of production.

2.

The emergency measures necessary to slow the spread of the contagion has led to the interruption of the process of capitalist accumulation as millions of workers were directed to stay at home and non-essential capitalist firms were forced to close. This has produced an economic contraction that is likely larger than any previous contraction in history. As a result, the various nation states have been compelled to step in and implement assorted relief measures to replace the wages of the working class -- lost because of social distancing measures -- and to bail out idle and failing capitalist firms that are teetering on the edge of collapse. 

These interventions nation states have made to contain the pandemic have given communists the world over the opportunity to approach the coming crisis with a degree of coordination that is far greater than anything seen in recent years. The working classes of every country now face almost the exact same set of difficulties -- massive unemployment and lost wages. This calls for the same response: a dramatic reduction of hours of labor in all countries.

The alternative--massive stimulus and relief measures--just will not work for most countries. The capacity of nation states to implement relief measures designed to replace the wages of the working class -- lost because of social distancing measures -- is not uniform among nation states. The United States, of course, can operate rather freely, since it controls the world reserve currency. Similarly, nations states, like Germany and China, who have accumulated large reserves of foreign exchange, can, if they choose, expend some of these reserves to maintain their national capitals on life support for some time. 

Aside from these few countries however, the ability of most countries to run the massive deficits necessary to finance these interventions are questionable. Some countries have standing to borrow in a pinch, but the capacity to maintain their national capitals on life support for long periods of time is circumscribed by foreign and domestic creditors. And at the bottom of the pyramid are the vast majority of nations that have few resources and are utterly dependent on foreign assistance. Communists have to offer an approach that works not just for the rich countries, but for all countries -- even, and especially, the poorest.

3.

To paraphrase that American officer in Vietnam, the fascists found it necessary to destroy capitalism in order to save it. At a minimum, it is obvious that capitalist accumulation has largely come to a standstill. But here is the thing: capital, as we all know, is value in motion, self-expanding value. How does value in motion come to a standstill? What happens to capital, when value itself no longer circulates as self-expanding value? Can one simply turn capital off, like a light switch, for weeks, or even months, and turn it back on again, once the “All clear” has been given by the public health authorities?

Communists should not be so quick to answer, “Yes.” We have never been here before. And, largely, our immediate actions will be determined by the answer we give. If we assume capital is dead, we will act one way. If we assume capital is alive and just waiting to spring back into action, we will act another way. The unusually swift action that led to the adoption of a relief package in Washington suggests the fascists do not think capital is as resilient as communists seem to think it is.

The Federal Reserve has predicted that as much as 30 percent of workers will be displaced from their jobs as a result of this emergency. It is difficult to tell how much of this has already been realized, since the archaic unemployment reporting system completely broke down in this emergency, according to one media outlet. Basically, the March monthly non-farm payroll report, which tells us how bad unemployment has become, shows that overall unemployment in the United States fell only 701,000 persons (although millions already have lost their jobs over the last two weeks). The reasons for this is the way the data is collected and published by Washington. (The Economic Policy Institute has an article on the problem.)

The horrendous damage actually done to the productive forces by this emergency may be hidden from official unemployment statistics for a month. This is a problem. Often, reality is only real for communists if the government reports it and the media echoes it. But the way the U.S. government collects data is deliberately designed to blunt public perception of things like rising unemployment and inflation (for obvious reasons).

However, we do have access to slightly more reliable proxies. There is the BLS weekly initial jobless claims report which shows unimaginably huge jumps in jobless claims over the last two weeks of nearly 10 million persons. This is more jobless claims than the whole of the 2008 financial crisis.

We can also look at other countries. Israel, facing the same state public health lockdown, has seen its unemployment rate jump from historic lows to 24% in a single month. While Spain has also seen a massive jump in jobless claims that has almost wiped out all employment gains back to its historic financial crisis highs in 2013.

We have other indicators that suggest massive damage as well: the auto industry remains completely shut in, subway ridership is down 75%, airline travel is down 93%, and retail foot traffic is down 97%.

Beyond this, the European services purchasing managers index (PMI), a forward looking survey of purchasing managers in the services sector, is near apocalyptic levels. Italy has fallen from 52.1 to a deeply contractionary reading of 17.4; Spain has fallen from 52.1 to 23; France collapsed from 52.5 to 27.4 and Germany plunged from 52.5 to 31.7.

Taken together, these assorted proxies suggest the public health measures to contain the pandemic are inflicting savage and ongoing damage to the capitalist accumulation process.

Another, less direct reason to expect unprecedented carnage to the productive forces is that we suspect the terrain of the world market has been prepared for this event in the same way years of drought prepares a region for uncontrollable wildfires. The literature has long marked the accumulation of a very large mass of superfluous capital and a very large population of surplus workers, resulting from the transformation of agriculture and the improvement in productivity of social labor in industry, combined with state efforts to engineer continuous expansion of empty labor in the tertiary sector, through massive deficit spending.

The measures taken in the present emergency appear to have punctured a bubble that has been at least nine decades in the making — back to the Great Depression. We cannot over-emphasize how significant this situation is. We already have accumulated a huge surplus population from previous economic contractions that have not been absorbed back into productive employment from both the 2001 and 2008 crisis, respectively. The emergency measures taken in response to this pandemic will easily increase those numbers by a magnitude at least. And it is likely that profound changes in the economy predicted to take place over the next decade, (e.g. widespread automation), may now be realized in a matter of months or even weeks.

You do not have to be a catastrophist to understand what has happened here. In two short weeks, capital values have been destroyed and workers have been set free from production on an unimaginable scale seldom seen in a full-blown economic contraction lasting years, perhaps decades. And this has occurred not just in one or two countries, but in almost every nation on the planet and all together. We hardly think anyone contemplating this situation can operate from the baseline assumption that capitalism has survived. 

This suggests our options as a class going forward will be to accept an attempted restoration of the capitalist accumulation process by the state or press ahead with fundamental alterations of all existing relations.

4.

The state is determined to restore capitalist accumulation. They will not let anything prevent the return to the pre-Covid-19 status quo. They will throw the kitchen sink at the problem, but we don’t expect much original thinking here. 

On track one, we think the state will follow the standard Keynesian recession/depression playbook. That means a huge fiscal/monetary stimulus bolus and massive tax cuts targeted to businesses and the very wealthy. The Democrats and the Republicans will argue as usual over who gets how much of what — as if it makes a difference under wage slavery which slave master gets the actual subsidy. Following the United States, Japan has announced a relief package said to amount to 25 percent of GDP. Italy has proposed a stimulus plan that amounts to an astonishing fifty percent of its GDP. Spain has floated the idea of a universal basic income -- but they have been saying the same thing for at least four years.

Anyone expecting any creativity here is likely to be disappointed. We haven’t seen anyone thinking outside the box so far, when it comes to “getting the economy back on its feet.” If creative thinking is going to happen, it will happen only when this uninspired stuff fails. The Obama administration, for instance, never attempted to recover any of the jobs and output lost in the 2008 crisis over its eight years. It just let all of that lost output and those lost jobs go. We expect the Trump administration will do the same.

Meanwhile, on track two, the state will roll out the notorious class warfare wishlist. This starts with elimination of things like the minimum wage, OSHA, and various labor protection laws, as well as some federal version of a right to work law, etc. NLRB, as useless as it is, will likely be abolished or just gutted. (In this vein, Trump’s NLRB is making it almost impossible to unionize in the United States.)

This will be total class war, the likes of which has never been seen in the whole of the history of capitalism. It will unfold against the backdrop of extreme deprivation and barbarous competition for jobs among the working class. Even as we speak, the plans are being laid for this total class war in the White House.

5.

The only way to prevent capitalist accumulation from restarting is to immediately reduce hours of labor. We need to replace the present emergency shutdown of non-essential businesses with a strict reduction on hours of labor of a similar magnitude. By radically reducing hours of labor and imposing compensation through a dramatic increase in the minimum wage, we can at least impose severe restrictions on the scale of any future attempt to re-establish capitalist accumulation.

How this works:

It is estimated that this emergency shutdown of non-essential businesses will eventually lead to roughly 47 million workers being unemployed, furloughed or otherwise idled. This translates into an estimated reduction of GDP by about 30-35% and actual employment by about 30%. The approach we advocate is simple: since we are already looking at a large drop in GDP and employment, we should convert this drop into a dramatic reduction of the 40hour workweek  to 24 hours per week. This would impose a reduction of hours of labor on a scale that is similar in scale to the 30% unemployment already made necessary by the public health emergency.

There are five advantages to this approach.

First, the absolute accumulation of excess capital and a surplus population of workers has been stopped for the most part, globally. By locking in a deep reduction of hours of labor at this point, we prevent the capitalists from restarting it. We could go further and reduce hours of labor still more to 15 hours or even 10 hours — imposing draconian limits on accumulation and forcing introduction of automation to compensate for a rapidly shrinking labor pool.

Second, as satellite data is showing, the present level of employment hours is having a dramatic impact on global climate change. Reduction of hours of labor has an immediate impact on this problem that can be visualized noticeably. We would be doubling down on this positive development.

Third, we produce a labor shock effect: as the labor hours supplied to the market fall, wages rise. Writers also are beginning to note that reduction of hours of labor has a positive impact on the cohesiveness of the working class and their ability to organize. This is, by far, the most important factor for communists to think about. Reduction of working hours undercuts competition and fragmentation within the working class by reducing the aggregate amount of labor supplied to capital.

Fourth, reducing hours of labor, especially in the rich countries, will, naturally, cause capital flight. As bizarre as this sounds, this is actually a good thing. Africa, Asia and Latin America need investment. They will not get it unless capital currently locked up in the rich countries is forced to flee to the less developed regions of the world market. A dramatic reduction of hours of labor here will accelerate this process.

Fifth, reducing hours of labor will accelerate automation. There is no better way to force capitalists to introduce improved methods of production than to dramatically drive up labor costs. Reducing hours of labor can do this by increasing the cohesiveness and bargaining power of the working class — just as leaving 47 million workers unemployed can weaken the working class, by leaving it balkanized and fragmented.

Finally, we want to warn those who are complacent about an attempt by the state to restart the capitalist accumulation process that the damage done to labor markets in this period is unimaginably extensive. Once this pandemic emergency is declared over, people will be told to go back to work. Millions will already have lost their jobs by then. To give an example: retail brick and mortar is likely never coming back. 

That’s one out of every four workers in the United States. Where will those workers go for jobs? Forty-seven million workers frantically looking for work at the same time is not something we should ever want to see happening in the United States. But this is exactly what is likely to happen if the emergency passes and restoration of the status quo ante is attempted.

6.

People should be clear that the emergency measures taken to control the pandemic are not the actual crisis. They are only the trigger to the actual crisis. The crisis, i.e., the sudden and forcible adjustment of the global labor market, will begin once the emergency measures to contain the pandemic are relaxed and workers are told to go back to work.

Forty-seven million have been unemployed in the United States — billions worldwide. This implies competition on a scale that is unimaginable to us today. All this has been prepared by the impact of the emergency measures taken to contain the pandemic on capitalist relations of production.

When people are told to get back to work, millions of workers in the United States and billions more around the world will no longer have jobs and no prospect of finding a job. Capitalist relations of production will experience a sudden, sharp and forcible adjustment to this new reality (again, the likes of which we have probably have never witnessed in the history of the mode of production.)

As those who are familiar with Marx’s theory are aware, a crisis is not some sort of magic carpet ride to communism. It is a violent eruption that cannot, of itself, go beyond the limits of the mode of production. We believe this will be the granddaddy of all crises.

7.

There is one idea communists must work on now to prepare. It is extremely important to forge solidarity between workers who are still at work and the millions who have lost their jobs. This effort must be given the highest priority by communists now, before the emergency is declared over and workers are forced to return to the labor market looking for jobs.

We suggest communists everywhere at least form mutual aid funds of workers helping workers to provide mutual aid between the employed and unemployed -- no state, church, NGO or charity involvement! (We would even discourage labor union involvement, since they are often controlled by the fascists.) Efforts should be made to take up collections of money, food and clothing at your workplaces to aid the unemployed. 

This campaign should be a pure worker to worker mutual aid effort. Committees should be formed covering both workplace and community. People need to facilitate it by doing research in their communities to find out who has already lost their jobs in their community, collect names etc. We want to build ties of solidarity within the class outside the state, church and charities. If these ties are not forged between the employed and unemployed, workers will be set against one another when the crisis hits.

We are urgently calling for a shift in the strategy of all communists that takes into account the new reality created by the emergency measures imposed by the state on the capitalist accumulation process. Because of this pandemic, the state has been forced to do what communists have been aiming to do since the time of the Communist Manifesto: shut down the capitalist accumulation process.

Admittedly, it has happened in a way we did not expect. The impact of the public health measures taken to respond to the pandemic on capitalist relations of production turned out to be a black swan. And it takes a second to wrap our heads around the fact that it happened. Workers are off the job not because of a general strike, but because the state has closed all non-essential businesses. This did not happen the way we expected it to happen. But it happened! The accumulation process has been shut down. This is actually where we are now!

The state has been forced, very much against its will, to shut down all non-essential businesses; to shut down the accumulation process itself. What can we do this very instant to keep it shut down? There are millions of workers who are now set free from productive employment; they are unemployed. We need to fight to convert this huge mass of unemployment into free time for every member of society. The alternative is one relief bill after another as the state tries desperately to re-establish the old relations of production.

We cannot let another opportunity pass us as happened during the Great Depression when capital ground to a halt and workers fought for a shorter work week, but were given the New Deal, Auschwitz and World War II instead.

It is Difficult to be Optimistic about Climate Action at COP 24

The 24th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), runs from 2 to 14 December, in Katowice in Poland. The conference is expected to finalise the rules for the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change, made at COP 21 in 2015, to reduce carbon emissions to keep global temperatures below a 1.5C rise above pre-industrial levels.

The actions required of nations to meet the commitments of COP 21 are not binding, and rely far too heavily on techno fixes, most of which do not yet exist in largescale. Some of the targets handed to participating countries are also massaged, to make them easier to hit, and investment by rich countries to help poorer countries adjust to renewable energy sources, has not been fully met.

The United States, of course, under President Trump, has now withdrawn from the Paris Agreement, and is making cuts to climate science research and expanding the use of coal, which the burning of emits the most carbon of any fossil fuel. Reuters reported earlier this month that President's Trump team will "set up a side-event promoting fossil fuels" at the conference. So, all in all, even before the conference starts, it is very difficult to have any optimism that serious progress will be made in Katowice.

Coming on the back of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which stated that we have at most twelve years to drastically reduce carbon emissions, a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says that concentrations of key gases in the atmosphere have hit a historic high and there is no sign of a reversal in this rising trend.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached 405 parts per million (ppm) in 2017, a level not seen in 3-5 million years. We need to be below 350 ppm, to keep within the COP 21 target, of not rising above 1.5C of pre-industrial levels.

All the scientific evidence points to urgent and wide ranging action needing to be taken to reduce CO2 emissions drastically. But as the name gives away, this is the 24^th time that politicians from around the world have met in an effort reduce carbon emissions, but still haven’t taken enough action to make the kind of impact needed.

The problem is, that burning fossil fuels to provide the energy for our economic system of productivism, is what drives economic growth, and therefore provides wealth, is not compatible with reaching climate change goals. Yes, we should be moving to renewable sources of energy much faster than we are, but if growth keeps rising, as it must within the logic of the system, it is unlikely to ever be enough.

We need a great transformation of our societies and global economy, to use less resources, and to focus away from increasing GDP, if we are to have a realistic chance of stopping catastrophic climate change. The modest goals of COP 21 which this conference is meant put into action, falls way short of what needs to be done.    

About 20,000 people from 190 countries will take part in the event, including politicians, representatives of non-governmental organizations, scientific community and business sector. 

The United Nations has also created a "People's Seat" for the public to "virtually sit" and share their views alongside government leaders at the climate talks. To join the effort, tag your thoughts with hashtag #TakeYourSeat on social media.

This is your chance to put pressure on delegates, and help to save the planet.   

Climate Change is a ‘Cultural Marxist Plot’ - Brazil’s New Foreign Minister Believes

The newly elected President elect of Brazil, who takes office in January, the far right Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed the ‘Trump of the tropics,’ has appointed Ernesto Araújo, as the county’s foreign minister, in a move that looks ominous for efforts to tackle climate change. Brazil is home to probably the largest area of rain forest in the world. Bolsonaro, has supported a weakening of protections for the Amazon, the richest area of biodiversity in the world. Forests will be felled and the land turned into savannah, for use for agribusiness, mining and building construction.

So, Araújo’s belief that climate change is all a Marxist plot, fits part of a piece, similar to Donald Trump’ claims that climate change is a ‘hoax’ perpetrated by China to hobble the US economically. China can hardly be accurately described as "Marxist,’ or even left-wing, especially these days, but you can see the lazy and nationalistic thinking that Trump is trying push. It is a thinly veiled attempt to open up the environment to further capitalist exploitation and economic growth.

Back to Araújo, though. Writing on his blog he says “The left has sequestered the environmental cause and perverted it to the point of paroxysm over the last 20 years with the ideology of climate change, climate change.”

“This dogma has been used to justify increasing the regulatory power of states over the economy and the power of international institutions on the nation states and their populations, as well as to stifle economic growth in democratic capitalist countries and to promote the growth of China.”

Quite why Araújo seems to think that he is qualified to pronounce on these matters, he is not a climate scientist, or a scientist of any description; he studied linguistics and literature at university, and was trained as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is a mystery. The vast majority of climate scientists do not think that man-made climate change is some sort of conspiracy. This is just right-wing rhetoric from Araújo,or if you like, fake news.

Some countries in South America have seen the rise of a form of ecosocialism, particularly in Bolivia and Venezuela, but again I don’t think you can call this Marxist, in any accurate use of the term. Perhaps, it is just a short hand expression to describe left-wing politics and those who practice it, to some extent or another, and to try and smear such governments with a term that is deemed to be politically toxic.

The British right-wing media routinely call the UK Labour party leadership ‘Marxist,’ which is clearly not the case, as in reality it is pretty mainstream social democratic, and not even as left-wing as Labour was in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Accuracy is not their aim though. Scaring the voters with this claptrap is the intention.

All ecosocialists do think that our ecological problems, including climate change, are rooted in the capitalism’s propensity for accumulation and infinite economic growth on a finite planet, and some might be more accurately described as eco-Marxist. James Bellamy Foster et al at Monthly Review are an example of this. Other ecosocialists, and I include myself in this, are more loosely Marxist, and Michel Lowy is a prominent example of this type of thinking.

Capitalism which really only got going during the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century, and this was only made possible by burning coal, to create steam power, to run the machines that increased productivity, and so profits, for the capitalist class. It is no coincidence that global temperatures began to rise at this point, accelerating in the twentieth century, so that temperatures are now around 1C higher today, and rising.

The denial of man-made climate change, funded by fossil fuel corporations, but also by other capitalist interests, is clearly an attempt to throw up a smokescreen, if you will forgive the analogy, so that business as usual can carry on. All perfectly rational for capitalists, given the potential that action on climate change has for stopping these corporations from making money.

Some ‘green’ capitalists of course, spy a new opportunity for making money, with a move to providing renewable energy, solar, wind, wave etc and they promote carbon trading schemes. As though the market which caused the problem, can somehow solve it. 

Renewable energy would still use up precious resources, and probably doesn’t have the capacity to keep up with the veracious and increasing appetite of the system for energy input, to drive economic growth exponentially.

The really inconvenient truth, to borrow Al Gore’s term, and his rather modest proposals to solve climate change, is that if we don’t ditch capitalism, humanity faces a massive climate disaster.