The prioritization of human health, development and self-activity in Chavez-era Venezuela

The Bolivarian Revolution, led by Hugo Chávez until his death in 2013, has undergone multiple phases since President Chávez’s first election in 1999. Twenty years ago, a new form of social services, the mission, was created to bypass recalcitrant bureaucrats and to enable the participation of those receiving social services. Another initiative, the commune, was conceived as a way of enabling people to organize for, and create solutions, to problems at the grassroots level. In this excerpt from What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, the beginnings of these two programs are discussed.

Begun in 2003, the [Venezuelan government created] missions [that were] social-welfare programs organized through mass grassroots participation and funded by the national government. Achieving more control over the state oil company and the sharp increases in oil prices enabled the government to generously fund the missions. Given the corruption and inertia of the state bureaucracy, and the unwillingness of many professionals to provide services to the barrios, the missions were established to provide services directly while enabling participants to shape the programs. Political scientist Juan Carlos Monedero explained the decision to go around established institutions:

“The memory of the [pre-Chávez] Fourth Republic* was too intense, and the sociological fourth republicanism pervaded the state apparatus in an absolute way. The intentions to use the public administration to pay the social debt in education and sanitation were answered by civil servants long established in the state structures with a resounding no. If Venezuelan doctors were not willing to go up the hills (of the shanty towns), it was necessary to resort to other formulae. If the economic administration organs had no answers for over half the population, it was necessary to find other mechanisms. A sort of parallel state with people’s participation was put in motion. The answers required were found by resorting to the organization of the people and in some cases to help from Cuba (which, like any other country, exported what it was competitive in). Around 18 thousand Cuban medics as well as a strong social impulse began to fill in the traditional holes of the Venezuelan state.”

These missions brought positive results, concurs Margarita López Maya, a political scientist and historian who has taught at the Central University of Venezuela since 1982. They enabled access to services and assistance previously denied under the austerity of previous governments, she wrote:

“Missions (programs bypassing uncooperative or ineffective state agencies), such as Barrio Adentro (free 24 hours a day primary health care and disease prevention for low income groups), Mercal (state distribution of food at subsidized prices), Robinson 1 and 2 (literacy and primary education for adults), Ribas and Sucre (secondary and university education for those who had missed or not finished these), Vuelvan Caras (training for employment), and the Bolivarian schools, where a full day schedule has been restored, with two free meals and two snacks a day, plus free uniforms and textbooks: all these undoubtedly had a positive political impact. The government has also invested in the social economy, as in the ‘ruedas de negocios,’ in which the creation of cooperatives is encouraged in order to supply goods and services to the state sector. The government has also created a system of micro-financing with the Women’s Bank, the Sovereign People’s Bank, and so on, which make small loans to lower income borrowers.”

Neoliberal conceptions of micro-finance are based on attempts to put a “human face” on World Bank and International Monetary Fund structural-adjustment programs and designed to accompany the forced opening of Global South economies to predatory multinational financial-service corporations and impose market “solutions” to poverty stripped of all references to relations of power and domination — and not only fail to ameliorate poverty but sometimes make it worse. In contrast, the Women’s Development Bank holds dialogues with recipients to understand what their needs are, and then provides training based on community needs and expectations to go with the credit, and helps women organize themselves and to help them learn to monitor the bank’s performance.

Human health and development become the priorities

Improvements in health care were helped by Cuban doctors, who were assigned to 1,600 medical offices around the country, and eventually trained Venezuelan doctors to replace the Cuban doctors. The Barrio Adentro mission sought to create an integrated health care system including clinics and hospitals. Two other missions related to health are José Gregorio Hernandez (named in honor of a “people’s doctor” known for his dedication), which provides a census of all people with a genetic deficiency or illness, and Milagro, which provides free ophthalmologic pathology services, a program that began to be expanded elsewhere in Latin America.

Among the approximately two dozen missions are Alimentación, which incorporates the Mercal network that provides food at subsidized prices and a distribution system; Cultura, which seeks the decentralization and democratization of culture to ensure that all have access to it and stimulate community participation; Guaicaipuro, intended to guarantee the rights of Indigenous peoples as specified in the constitution; Madres del Barrio, designed to provide support to housewives in dire poverty and help their families overcome their poverty; Negra Hipólita, which assists children, adolescents and adults who are homeless; Piar, which seeks to help mining communities through dignifying living conditions and establishing environmental practices; and Zamora, intended to reorganize land, especially idle land that could be used for agriculture, in accordance with the constitution.

The missions have “permitted poor Venezuelans especially to overcome the effects of two decades [prior to Chávez’s first election] of economic stagnation, political apathy and pessimism about the future,” according to López Maya. The first years of the missions were years of strong economic performance. From 2003 to 2008, unemployment fell by more than half, to 7.8 percent; gross domestic product increased by more than 50 percent; inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient (the standard metric), although still high, noticeably decreased; the human development index strongly increased; and poverty rates strongly declined.

^{A photographic exhibition “Hugo Chávez: Precursor of the multipolar world” inaugurated at the National Assembly of Ecuador in 2013 (photo by Hugo Ortiz Ron / Asamblea Nacional)}

An important factor in these gains was the high price of oil, which doubled from 2003 to 2006. The ability of the government to retain more of the revenue from oil sales also helped. But the dangerous dependency on a single export had not changed, López Maya wrote:

“It is important to emphasize that these advances are almost exclusively based on oil revenues. According to the Venezuelan Central Bank, in 2006, 89 per cent of our exports were oil. We are as dependent on oil as in the past, if not more so. If we examine the current relationship between the state and PDVSA (the state-owned oil corporation) in terms of the hard currency earned by the firm, in 2006 the state received 68 per cent while 32 per cent remained in the hands of PDVSA. The oil sector represents 14 per cent of the [gross national product].”

Concurrent with capturing more revenue from oil, the government sought to make tax collection more efficient. Tax collection had been a traditional weakness in the past. Some success in getting foreign multi-national corporations to pay taxes increased government revenue, although in 2009 what was collected remained below the Latin American average. Because of the strong increase in revenue from oil, that resource became more important to the government’s ability to fund social programs — the percentage of government revenue from oil increased from 25 percent in 1998 to 40 percent in 2008.

Then there is the question of the sustainability of the missions, a question that arises not only because of downturns in the price of oil, but whether they will be institutionalized. The missions represent a parallel government, seen as necessary because of the need to provide immediate relief to large, long-standing problems and a lack of time to dismantle bureaucratic obstructions. Continued mass participation is a crucial element that can guarantee the sustainability of the missions in the long term, but some formality is necessary if the state bureaucracy isn’t to reassert itself in the future. This is an issue that must be resolved, Monedero argues:

“Essential public goods which the Fourth Republic had denied for decades reached the poorest sectors of the citizenry. The novelty of the initiative, the initial success, the people’s mystique which followed the first moments of this parallel state made their recognition most ample. Nevertheless, once that period was over, everything seemed to indicate that the missions need, in order to be consolidated, some sort of institutionality which integrates them in a more stable political realm so that it is not sustained by volunteer labor nor by abstract motivation. The role of the state here appears to be relevant and like a guarantee to complete that process (which does not mean it be the traditional liberal state). Nevertheless it has yet to be resolved what the role of the state apparatus in the discourse and the practice of the so-called socialism of the twenty-first century is.”

Advancing ‘constituent power’ through communal councils

Similar to the establishment of the missions to provide services by going around a recalcitrant bureaucracy, communal councils and communes were established to bypass local and state governments sometimes unresponsive to grassroots demands and in some cases opposition strongholds hostile to the democratizations of the Bolivarian process. The communal councils have their roots in the assemblies that barrio residents created following the Caracazo [a massive 1989 revolt triggered by a new government’s sudden implementation of a severe International Monetary Fund austerity program and the deadly indiscriminate force used against protestors].

The Barrio Assembly of Caracas emerged in 1991 as something of a general assembly representing local groups, coming into being after demonstrations marking the first and second anniversaries of the Caracazo were dispersed by soldiers firing on them from rooftops. Later versions of these assemblies organized on the eve of the 2002 coup attempting to overthrow Hugo Chávez; among their accomplishments were distributing 100,000 fliers calling for a march on the presidential palace to defend the government. With these grassroots organizations in mind, local participation was enshrined in the 1999 constitution. The constitution, through several articles, codifies public participation in municipal budgeting and established local public planning councils to facilitate that participation.

^{Hugo Chávez swearing in as president in 2013 (photo by AVN, Prensa Presidencial/Venezuelanalysis)}

The public participation in formulating the budget of the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil was the model, although the Venezuelan version was intended to go further by authorizing the direct financing of community programs through access to a special national fund set up to finance local projects and for citizens to be directly involved in local development plans. But these local planning councils generally didn’t function. Local mayors either found ways to control them or ignored them; in many cases they and other officials sat on them. Their failure is attributed to being organized across municipalities with populations as large as hundreds of thousands, far too large for direct democracy to work, and that these were bodies decreed from above rather than formed as grassroots initiatives and thus lacking a methodology for communities to elect genuine representatives.

In the wake of the failure of the local planning councils, the communal councils were created. These are the basic building blocks of the communal system but in contrast to the citywide structure of the former, the communal councils operate at a neighborhood level and are direct-democracy bodies, with no seats for municipal office holders. In essence, the communal councils are the base of an alternative government structure, one intended to bypass municipal and other local governments and to eventually replace them. This was an attempt to provide a concrete form to the concept of “constituent power,” the idea that people should be direct participants in the decisions to affect their lives and communities, as distinct from “constituted power,” under which decision-making is ceded to elected officials and business elites.

Those most affected are best positioned to make decisions

Legislation passed in 2006 formally recognized the communal councils and the form quickly gained popularity — there were an estimated 30,000 in existence by 2009. These councils are formed in compact urban areas containing 200 to 400 households in cities and 20 or so in rural areas. All residents of the territory are eligible to participate. In turn, communal councils organize into larger communes, and communes into communal cities, to coordinate projects too large for a neighborhood or to organize projects necessarily on a larger scale, such as improving municipal services.

Article 1 of the law governing communal councils states:

“Within the framework of a participative and protagonist democracy, the Communal Councils represent the means through which the organized masses can take over the direct administration of the policies and projects which are created to respond to the needs and aspirations of the communities in the construction of a fair and just society. The organization, operation and action of the Communal Councils are governed by the principles of co-responsibility, cooperation, solidarity, transparency, accountability, social responsibility, fairness, justice, social controllership and economic self-management.”

The communal councils are described in Article 3 as a “system for participation and protagonis[m] of the people” and that, as codified in Article 4, participants have the obligations of “social co-responsibility, accountability, as well as the transparent, timely, and effective management of the monies allocated to them.” All inhabitants of the area encompassing a communal council above the age of 15 are members of the council’s assembly, which is the highest decision-making body. The day-to-day work of the communal council is conducted by committees focused on whatever issues the local community deems a priority. Spokespeople are elected by the assembly for each committee; these are not representatives but are directly accountable and subject to recall. They do not make decisions by themselves. They can be elected for a maximum of two two-year terms. Financial and “social control” (public-audit) committees are also elected.

^{Supporters of the Venezuelan government demonstrate in 2017 (photo by Rachael Boothroyd Rojas/Venezuelanalysis)}

At least 20 percent of the inhabitants older than 15 must be in attendance for an assembly to achieve quorum. The communal council is required to propose three projects that will contribute to development in the community; funding for approved projects will usually come from national-government bodies. About 12,000 communes received a total of one billion bolívares (out of a national budget of 53 billion) in 2006, and in 2007 about six billion bolívares were provided.

Communal councils had already been in formation, and those organizing pushed for the law codifying them. As explained by a Caracas activist, Eduardo Daza:

“It’s not that the president said, ‘here’s a new law, from now on it’s going to be like this.’ It wasn’t like that, we went all the way to the National Assembly [the federal legislature] to fight for the law of communal councils and though many of the demands we made were not incorporated into the law, nevertheless the law let us take the first step.”

Projects for infrastructure and basic services tend to be the priorities for communal councils. Improvements to sewage and water systems, road building and repair, fixing or building housing, and electrical-grid projects were common needs that were addressed. Community activist groups often supported the creation of the councils, and activists and councils tend to work together. Building the councils is also seen by many activists as a route to building socialism. According to a manifesto issued after a meeting of communal council members:

“We as communal councils believe that the most expeditious way to build the communal state is to assume power at the local level, from an economic, political, military, social and cultural perspective; therefore, we must act in a bloc, giving us higher levels of organization and coordination, it being essential that we constitute a movement that gives us voice, body and face as communal power, throughout the process of building socialism in Venezuela.”

An interesting development is that many (in the case of councils studied by researchers, a majority) who have taken active roles in the communal councils were not politically active before the 2002 failed coup. Generally, women outnumber men among the active participants, and it is often older women taking the lead. The culture of participation that the councils encourage and that the Bolivarian government is paying vastly more attention to solving social problems and the needs of the poor than prior governments has facilitated the organizing of women, and the new activity of women in turn is breaking down traditional macho attitudes. Health committees tackling problems of illness, access to contraception and motherhood are often where participation begins. Once involved, women sign up for training programs, with more women than men taking advantage of these.

In turn, increased participation leads to more community involvement in solving social problems that were previously kept behind closed doors. As a communal activist in Caracas, Petra Rivas, a hairdresser who sat on her council’s social-audit committee, said: “My life has changed 100%, … I have changed much. … More than anything, we have humanized, because before it was from the front of your door to inside your house. You didn’t know what was happening with your neighbor, or to that neighbor woman whose husband you saw drinking all night while she had no food. And we integrated ourselves, we spoke with the woman, look, we’re going to bring you in here, look at your husband, speak up, don’t let him mistreat you, this is the woman’s house, go to the prosecutor.”

* Venezuela’s Fourth Republic was the constitutional structure of the country’s government from 1961 to 1999. With the voter approval and institution of a new constitution in 1999, Venezuela’s new constitutional setup is the Fifth Republic.

This is an excerpt from What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, a study of nations that have attempted to construct post-capitalist societies published by Autonomedia. Citations omitted. Sources cited in this excerpt, in the book, are Tom Malleson, “Cooperatives and the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ in Venezuela,” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, summer 2010; Juan Carlos Monedero, “The Social Economy in Venezuela: Between the Will and the Possibility,” anthologized in Beyond Capitalism: Building Democratic Alternatives for Today and the Future; Margarita López Maya, “Venezuela Today: A ‘Participatory and Protagonistic’ Democracy?,” Socialist Register, 2008; Heloise Weber, “The global political economy of microfinance and poverty reduction,” anthologized in Microfinance: Perils and Prospects; Duncan Green, “The backlash against microfinance,” From Poverty to Power Oxfam blog, August 19, 2009; Jason Hickel, “The microfinance delusion: who really wins?,” The Guardian, June 10, 2015; Global Women’s Strike, Creating a Caring Economy; Özgür Orhangazi, “Contours of Alternative Policy Making in Venezuela,” Review of Radical Political Economics, June 2014; George Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution; Dario Azzellini, Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below; Roger Burbach and Camila Piñeiro Harnecker, “Venezuela’s Participatory Socialism,” Socialism and Democracy, November 2007; “The Special Law on Communal Councils,” Global Exchange web site; Matt Wilde, “Contested spaces: the communal councils and participatory democracy in Chavez’s Venezuela, Latin American Perspectives, January 2017.

It’s a capitalist world: No country on Earth respects labor rights

Conditions for working people continue to get worse. The right to strike, or to join a union, is denied by increasing numbers of the world’s governments. The 2023 Global Rights Index report issued by the International Trade Union Confederation makes for grim reading, as has consistently been the case for the decade that the ITUC has issued its yearly reports.

Once again, there is no country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights, the Global Rights Index report informs us. Nothing new here, as this was the case in the 2022 report, and all the reports before that. Neoliberalism does not have a human face.

Noting that “the foundations and pillars of democracy are under attack,” the report opens with a sobering summary:

“Across both high-income and low-income countries, as workers have felt the full force of a cost-of-living crisis, governments have cracked down on their rights to collectively negotiate wage rises and take strike action against employer and government indifference to the impacts of spiralling inflation upon working people. From Eswatini to Myanmar, Peru to France, Iran to Korea, workers’ demands to have their labour rights upheld have been ignored and their dissent has been met with increasingly brutal responses from state forces.”

Living in the Global North does not exempt you from repression. The report, in finding that 87 percent of the world’s countries violated the right to strike, noted that Belgium, Canada and Spain are among the countries in which working people have faced criminal prosecution and dismissals following a decision to strike. In South Korea, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering filed a lawsuit against leaders of the Korea Metal Workers’ Union for alleged financial losses incurred due to a strike, demanding 47 billion won (US$35.3 million).

Nearly as many countries — 79 percent — violated the right to collective bargaining, with workers in the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia reporting collective bargaining rights have been severely reduced. Almost three-quarters of countries — 73 percent — impeded the registration of unions through government legislation, including Canada.

Overall, the ITUC said, “The past 10 years have seen a consistent increase in the violation of workers’ rights across the regions. … The line between autocracies and democracies is blurring and workers are on the frontlines as governments and business attempt to obscure it further.” Although the ITUC doesn’t mention capitalism in its report, this trend, which goes back much longer than the past decade in which the confederation has issued its reports, is are symptomatic of the ongoing one-sided class war being fought by industrialists and financiers against working people. It should always be borne in mind that profits come from the difference between the value of what we produce, whether those be tangible goods or services, and the exchange value of those goods or services.

We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that some of the worst governments for upholding worker rights are the gendarmes of the world capitalist system. The United States and Britain are among the worst-ranked countries despite the finger-wagging those governments like to aim at other countries. The British government, for example, “brought new primary legislation before parliament in January 2023 that would enforce the unilateral imposition of Minimum Service Levels on railway workers, ambulance workers and fire service workers,” with provisions for such laws to be extended to several other job descriptions. That bill became law in July. Across the Atlantic, U.S. President Joe Biden, despite his claims of being “the most pro-union president,” imposed a contract on railroad workers, a majority of whom had voted against accepting, that left them with no sick days and other harsh working conditions.

The Global Rights Index ranks the world’s countries from 1 to 5, with 1 the best category, denoting “sporadic violations of rights,” defined as where “Violations against workers are not absent but do not occur on a regular basis.” Only nine countries were given a rating of 1 — the same nine as in 2022. Those nine are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Sweden. (These are green on the report’s maps.)

Rating 2 countries are those with “repeated violations of rights,” defined as where “Certain rights have come under repeated attacks by governments and/or companies and have undermined the struggle for better working conditions.” Countries with this rating include the Czech Republic, France, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland and Uruguay. (These are yellow on the report’s maps.)

Rating 3 countries are those with “regular violations of rights,” defined as where “Governments and/or companies are regularly interfering in collective labour rights or are failing to fully guarantee important aspects of these rights” due to legal deficiencies “which make frequent violations possible.” Countries with this rating include Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Mexico and South Africa. (These are light orange on the report’s maps.)

Rating 4 countries are those with “systematic violations of rights,” defined as where “The government and/or companies are engaged in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers, putting fundamental rights under threat.” Countries with this rating include Britain, Greece, Peru, the United States and Vietnam. (These are dark orange on the report’s maps.)

Rating 5 countries are those with “no guarantees of rights,” defined as “workers have effectively no access to these rights [spelled out in legislation] and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labour practices.” Countries with this rating include Brazil, China, Colombia, Ecuador, India, the Philippines, South Korea and Turkey. (These are red on the report’s maps.) In addition, there are countries with a 5+ rating, those with “No guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law.” Afghanistan, Myanmar, Syria and Yemen are among the 10 counties listed in this category, and are colored deep red.

That conditions for working people — who, after all, are the overwhelming majority of the world’s population — continue to deteriorate is consistent with other economic trends. About US$20 trillion (€18.7 trillion) have been given out just to prop up financial markets since the 2008 economic crash. Five of the world’s biggest central banks — the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, Bank of England and Bank of Canada — handed out about US$10 trillion to artificially prop up financial markets in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic on top of the US$9.36 trillion that was spent on propping up financial markets in the years following the 2008 global economic collapse.

We could cite the corporate greed that kept the Covid-19 pandemic alive, with that greed being facilitated by most of the world’s governments who failed to prioritize health care over money as exemplified by the ongoing failure to make vaccines available to the Global South. The European Union, with its obstinate refusal to waive any intellectual property rule because of fealty to Covid-19 vaccine makers, has been the biggest roadblock. Maintaining intellectual property rights was deemed more important than human life. We could also cite so-called “public-private partnerships” in which governments sell off public infrastructure below cost to corporations, which then raise costs, reduce services and eliminate jobs in the pursuit of extortionate profits.

The one-sided nature of class warfare is further illustrated by the World Bank’s “solution” to deteriorating wages and working conditions: calling for further lowering labor standards because current regulations are “excessive.” In other words, it’s work until you drop! And you’ll be expected to work longer hours until you drop as regulations on excessive working hours are frequently breached; as a result employees are forced to work more hours either because of fear of losing a job if they refuse or to survive because wages steadily fall behind inflation and living costs. And those living costs are especially subject to increases because the cost of housing is skyrocketing, rising far faster than inflation and wages in countries around the world.

How long until the world’s working people link together and defend themselves in what has been a one-sided war for half a century?

The tragedy of Allende-era Chile: A strong start countered by imperialist assault

The 50th anniversary of the first 9/11 — the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government headed by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende — is this month. Chilean working people made enormous advances during the first year of the Allende government, formally a multiparty coalition known as Popular Unity, before Chilean capitalists, U.S. corporate interests firmly backed by the Nixon administration and right-wing elements in both countries were able to regroup and begin a heavy-handed sabotage campaign waged with increasing vehemence. In this excerpt from What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, some of those first-year successes are recounted but the bourgeois forces are already beginning their efforts to obstruct and ultimately reverse all advancement.

For a little while more [after Salvador Allende’s government nationalized Chile’s copper industry in July 1971], Popular Unity continued to have the wind at its back. Its economic policies paid fast dividends: National unemployment dropped from six percent to four by the end of 1971, while for greater Santiago, unemployment declined from 8.3 percent to 3.8 percent, the lowest ever recorded. Importantly, most of the new jobs were in productive areas (agriculture, industry, construction) in contrast to previous years when job growth tended to be in services. Gross domestic product rose 8.5 percent for 1971, nearly double the 1960s average. Industrial growth was 12 percent, and here too this was not growth for growth’s sake — most of it was in production of basic goods such as food and clothing in contrast to past years when growth was based on durable goods such as appliances and automobiles. Wages increased 30 percent, and the labor share of income [of the Chilean economy] increased from 55 percent to 66 percent. These accomplishments were done with a significant cut in inflation. Perhaps the most basic measure of the improvement was that the poor could now afford to eat meat and buy clothes.

Storm clouds, however, began to appear on the horizon. The dramatic burst in production and living standards for 1971 had been assisted by the large amount of unused industrial capacity, the large numbers of unemployed who could be put to work, by freezing prices so that private employers couldn’t pass on the costs of wage increases to customers as had customarily been done, large inventories of goods and raw materials due to the recession that Popular Unity had inherited, and large currency reserves on which the government could draw. Further improvement would be harder to come by, in part due to the relative lag in food production.

The price of copper dropped sharply in 1971. Copper had sold as high as 84 cents per pound during the [preceding Christian Democrat] Frei administration and was still at 70 cents the first half of 1970, but would average only 49 cents for 1971. Given Chile’s heavy dependence on copper, that was a serious blow — each reduction of one cent cost the country $15 million over a year. At the same time, many products that Chile needed to import, including foodstuffs, rose in price. As 1972 began, a black market began to develop in response to these price imbalances. In addition to the rising costs of imported food (a problem difficult to tackle in the short term because Chile had long ceased to be food self-sufficient), wholesale distribution was still controlled by private capital. Instead of investing in production, that capital began to be used to buy up scarce items and re-sell them at extortionate prices.

Although much reduced for the year as a whole, inflation had begun to creep upward during the last two months of 1971; fear of renewed inflation caused the government and the national trade union federation, CUT, to agree to cap 1972 wages at the final 1971 inflation rate. The government had been printing money during 1971, a danger that would best not be continued. Individual unions resisted the wage cap despite arguments that too much of an increase would risk a resumption of inflation. And as 1972 opened, a U.S.-imposed credit blockade began, as promised by the Nixon administration. Not only was credit previously provided routinely by international lending agencies halted, routine short-term credits used to finance everyday trade were cut and even the sale of spare parts was stopped.

This was an “invisible” blockade; no official sanctions were announced. The credit blockade additionally impeded those firms that wanted to sell their products in Chile. Others that wished to do business found themselves unable to counter pressures brought to bear on them. Kennecott, one of the two major copper companies to be expropriated, filed lawsuits in Western European courts in a successful effort to halt copper sales. Chile’s chronic trade deficits, combined with the concentration of finance in New York, left the country highly vulnerable to a credit embargo, both by international lending organizations and corporate banks. This would have devastating effects, economist Richard E. Feinberg explained:

“The invisible credit blockade was the U.S.’s response to Allende’s moderate national and progressive domestic policies. The blockade reduced Chile’s capacity to import traditional consumer items, as well as the food needed by the better-off workers; Chilean industry and transport began to suffer from a lack of spare parts, and many factories had to reduce output due to a shortage of needed imported inputs, while Chile’s inability to import capital equipment undermined [Popular Unity’s] investment plans. The inevitable shortages of supply angered consumers and helped fuel inflation. The shortage of foreign exchange exacerbated social tensions.”

It was the success of Popular Unity that U.S. multinational capital feared

Although multi-national corporations compete, sometimes fiercely, with one another, they will close ranks and unite not only when the system they dominate is threatened, but when there is a sustained effort simply to contain their profits and redistribute income somewhat more fairly. Chile, a mid-sized country, hardly could constitute a threat to multi-national capital. But the example that Popular Unity had set raised alarm bells in corporate suites; if Chile succeeded in its peaceful road to socialism, other countries would surely wish to copy the example. Massive exploitation of underdeveloped countries swelled corporate coffers, and all the power they could bring to bear would be put into action, backed by the powerful governments of the global North all too willing to do their bidding.

Smaller businesses took their cues from their larger brethren.

Ariel Dorfman, who worked as a cultural and media adviser to the Popular Unity government, in his memoir Heading South, Looking North, tells of the story of “Juan,” a factory worker who was being driven out of the country into exile with him in the aftermath of the 1973 coup:

“[Allende’s] policies had created an economic boom: increased salaries and benefits led to skyrocketing consumption and that led, in turn, to a major increment in production. So, more goods sold and a better life for Juan and his co-workers, right? Not at all. The owner of the factory, opposed to the revolution, even if it did not threaten his property, had decided to sabotage production: he had stopped reordering machine parts, he had blocked distribution deals that were already in place, he refused to hire new workers and threatened to fire those who complained. He should have been making money in buckets and instead was secretly preparing bankruptcy proceedings, pulling his capital out of the industry, getting ready to flee the country. The workers had watched this class warfare patiently for months and, finally, when the owner had announced he was shutting down the whole operation, they had taken over the premises. It was the only way to save their jobs and keep producing the food that Chile needed. Allende’s government intervened in the conflict, negotiated compensation for the owner, and put the workers in control. Juan had been elected to head the council that, for a couple of years, ran that factory, and in spite of inevitable mistakes, it had been a successful venture.”

De-capitalization, removing equipment or outright closures were common reasons for the government to step in and take over enterprises; 1972 would see a steady stream of these. The example of the Yarur workers [who had taken over their textile mill in the first takeover directly accomplished by employees] had indeed quickened the tempo of the revolution. Regardless, from a macro-economic standpoint the gathering problems had to be confronted, a task made much harder by the obstinate refusal of the parliamentary opposition to approve any Popular Unity legislation.

^{The past is not forgotten. Chileans demonstrate in Plaza Baquedano, Santiago in 2019 (photo by Carlos Figueroa)}

The budget deficit had grown larger than planned due to the loss in income from softening copper prices, the increase in prices of imports, deficits in nationalized enterprises caught between rising costs and consumer-price freezes that had to be covered by the government, and the uncontrolled increase in land seizures. Revenue had to be increased. One way would be to crack down on tax evasion — the loss in 1971 just from evaded sales tax was three times the size of the deficit! The rise of the black market in 1972 would only aggravate this problem because illegal operations don’t pay taxes.

One solution to these problems would be a rationalization of the tax code, not only to reduce tax evasion, but to make the code more progressive. Popular Unity proposals to do this, however, were uniformly blocked by the Christian Democrat and National opposition. In part that was due to class interests, but also to prevent inflation from being tamed — fomenting economic chaos had become policy for the opposition parties. …

Working people weren’t experienced at management but quickly improved production

The workers who began to co-manage Chile’s growing social-property area made mistakes — having been shut out of all participation previously, how could it be otherwise? — but overall did well, both in terms of maintaining production, creating links with other enterprises and with surrounding communities, and with orienting production toward the everyday needs of Chileans.

The most comprehensive study of the social-property area was carried out by economists Juan Espinosa and Andrew Zimbalist, who performed an intensified study of 35 manufacturing enterprises that came to be part of the social-property area. The two found that in 29 of the 35 enterprises studied, productivity increased, and that the productivity improvements were sustained, even increasing over time. Those results imply that morale improved after the staff freed itself of private management, and such a conclusion is backed up in the findings that absenteeism declined, strikes were called at one-seventh the rate they had been previously, and theft and defects were reduced while more innovation was found.

Alienation from the process of production was gradually being eliminated, Espinosa and Zimbalist wrote. In their book Economic Democracy: Workers’ Participation in Chilean Industry 1970-1973 they quote a foundry production worker in an enterprise that they ranked near the median of participation levels of the 35 studied, and thus not an exceptional example. The worker said:

“We tried to break down the barriers which had been erected to divide us. We dissolved the three trade unions and formed a single one. Any executive or foreman could be submitted to the Discipline Committee. A collective bonus system was set up. In general, there was a qualitative change in human relationships. The executives and technicians attended the worker assemblies with everyone else — and their vote wasn’t worth more than that of a worker. We were all ‘workers’ with different functions — but the difference in functions didn’t define social privilege. It was the birth of a new sort of society — the reflections of our hopes and aspirations. Great perspectives opened — and for this we were ready to sacrifice ourselves — and so we did, simply because we were convinced that this would mean a better world for ourselves and our children.”

Few technicians left; in the majority of enterprises studied less than 10 percent. For all personnel, social services were greatly improved and working conditions improved. Improvements commonly done included ventilation and heating systems; construction or expansion of cafeterias; construction of day care centers; establishing first-aid clinics and purchases of ambulances, used by the surrounding community as well those working in the enterprise; initiation of cultural activities; and administrative and technical classes. Capitalists who had lost control complained that money was being wasted on these, but the money spent was less than one percent of enterprise net worth. And along with better conditions on the job was job rotation and drastic reductions in inequality; the biggest raises went to those with the lowest pay.

^{Popular Unity supporters rally in Chile in 1972 (photo via Revista Argentina Siete Días Ilustrados)}

In the first enterprise to be seized by its workers, the Yarur textile mill (subsequently known as “Ex-Yarur”), there was a “dramatic increase” in participation, “whether measured by voting, meeting attendance, or committee membership.” At general-assembly meetings, government managers could be criticized for giving reports that were insufficiently clear and concise. At this enterprise, “the politics of deference had given way to a participatory democracy.”

Interesting as well were the product changes made — production was increasingly geared to meeting needs instead of producing for the highest possible profit, in strong contrast to how production is organized under capitalism. At Ex-Yarur, for example, the repair shop began to manufacture three-quarters of the parts previously imported and no longer available due to the U.S. blockade. The enterprise instituted the “democratization of production” to ensure popular needs, in particular serving the most deprived, in contrast to the previous régime when production for the wealthy was emphasized.

Production for people, not for the highest profit

In line with these goals, a government organization, the State Technology Institute, developed 20 affordable products to meet needs. Among these were agricultural machinery; spoons for measuring rations of powdered milk given through a government plan; inexpensive but durable furniture for housing and playgrounds; and a simple record player. “Instead of giving priority to the production of capital-intensive goods and the maximization of profit, as private companies had done in the past, the government emphasized accessibility, use value, and the geographic origin of component parts,” noted Eden Medina, a historian of science and computing, in her study of technology during the Popular Unity era.

None of this is to suggest that paradise had been reached. Problems remained, including uneven levels of participation, occasional sectarian tensions, paternalism on the part of some Communist Party leaders, lack of commitment from Christian Democratic workers and insufficient responsiveness from the state bureaucracy. The study conducted by Espinosa and Zimbalist found that the more Christian Democrats who worked in an enterprise, the more thefts and defects that were reported. Parallel to that, the more participation by the full workforce in an enterprise, the less absenteeism and thefts and the more innovation there was. Another strong pattern in the social-property area was that no layoffs occurred when economic problems arose; instead efforts were made to bolster social services.

Changes were afoot in the countryside as well. Occupations of farmland increased dramatically in frequency after Allende took office, and although the government expressed public disapproval of these wildcat actions, there were no attempts at repression, consistent with the policy that force would never be used against its base. Agricultural production increased for 1971 and 1972 (although not enough to meet demand), but production was expected to decline 15 percent for 1973 due to the bosses’ strike in October 1972, which prevented seed and fertilizer to be delivered as the Southern Hemisphere growing season began. One serious problem that had not been tackled was that food distribution remained almost entirely in private hands. State agencies bought only 14 percent of agriculture products in 1971, enabling food in capitalist hands to be diverted to the black market, causing shortages and inflation as black-market food sold at prices that were multiples of official prices.

What had not yet been set up was a system of workers’ participation in planning. Workers persistently asked to be represented on the State Development Corporation’s sectoral development committees. Industrywide meetings of workers in the textile, metallurgy, forestry and mining industries passed resolutions calling for worker participation at all levels, and the trade union federation, the CUT, began planning for a national conference that would tackle this issue. Tragically, time was running out for these initiatives.

This is an excerpt from What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, a study of nations that have attempted to construct post-capitalist societies published by Autonomedia. Citations omitted. Sources cited in this excerpt, in the book, are Francisco Zapata, “The Chilean Labor Movement under Salvador Allende 1970-1973,” Latin American Perspectives, winter 1976; Edward Boorstein, Allende’s Chile: An Inside View; James D. Cockcroft and Jane Carolina Canning (eds.), Salvador Allende Reader: Chile’s Voice of Democracy; Richard E. Feinberg, “Dependency and the Defeat of Allende,” Latin American Perspectives, summer 1974; Ariel Dorfman, Heading South, Looking North: A Bilingual Journey; Juan G. Espinosa and Andrew S. Zimbalist, Economic Democracy: Workers’ Participation in Chilean Industry 1970-1973; Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism; Eden Medina, Cybernetics Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile; Kyle Steenland, “Rural Strategy Under Allende,” Latin American Perspectives, summer 1974

Call it whitewashing or greenwashing, World Bank subterfuge doesn’t fool us

Every so often, the World Bank puts out a paper that calls for better social protection or at least a somewhat better deal for working people. The public relations people there evidently believe we have very short memories.

No, dear reader, the World Bank has not changed its function, nor have elephants begun to fly. Without any hint of irony, the World Bank’s latest attempt at selective amnesia is what it calls its “Social Protection and Jobs” strategy, in which it purports to advocate that the world’s national governments “greatly expand effective coverage of social protection programs” and “significantly increase the scale and quality of economic inclusion and labor market programs.” Hilariously, the World Bank titles its 136-page report fleshing out this strategy “Charting a Course Towards Universal Social Protection: Resilience, Equity, and Opportunity for All.”

In that report, the World Bank, with a straight face, writes that it “recognizes that the progressive realization of universal social protection (USP), which ensures access to social protection for all whenever and however they need it, is critical for effectively reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity.” Furthermore, the report builds on a previous document that allegedly offers “an overarching framework for understanding the value of investing in social protection programs and outlined how the World Bank would work with client countries to further develop their social protection programs and systems.” The report asserts goals of achieving equity, resilience and opportunity for all people, especially the developing world’s most vulnerable, and “to create opportunity by building human capital and helping men and women to access productive income-earning opportunities.”

^{A demonstration in Oslo during the World Bank conference in June 2002 (photo by Vindheim)}

We arrive at that favorite set of code words, “human capital.” We’ll return to that shortly. But before we highlight the actual record of the World Bank and its role in imposing devastating austerity on countries around the world, at enormous human cost, let’s take a brief look at the International Trade Union Confederation response. The ITUC, which represents 200 million workers in 163 countries and has 338 national affiliates, says its “primary mission is the promotion and defence of workers’ rights and interests.” Readers may recall that the ITUC issues a yearly report on the state of labor, consistently finding that not a single country fully upholds workers’ rights.

In its four-page summary of the World Bank declaration, the ITUC said it agrees with the World Bank’s stated goals, and “agrees with the Bank that the lack of social protection for the majority of the world’s workers in the informal economy is a challenge that needs to be urgently addressed.” Nonetheless, the ITUC “has a number of considerable reservations to some of the policy messages” and disputes “the rigor of the analysis underpinning some of the policies proposed.”

The ITUC writes: “The Bank’s vision of universal social protection appears to prioritise the extension of targeted non-contributory social assistance at the expense of social security, when both forms of support serve distinct and complementary functions.” Further, it “disagrees with the Bank’s critique of social security schemes, especially pensions, as an undue burden on public finances and ‘regressive’ in nature.” The World Bank’s “solution” to make pension and social security systems sustainable “mainly involve reducing public subsidies to social security, strengthening the link from contributions to entitlements through defined-contribution schemes [retirement plans in which you pay into but have no guarantees as to payout], as well as strengthening the role of voluntary and private pensions.”

In other words, it’s work until you drop! That is already a long-term goal of right-wing ideologues and corporate interests not only in the United States but around the world.

Underneath the rhetoric, the usual right-wing prescriptions

And, true to right-wing form, the World Bank places the onus for unemployment squarely on individuals. The ITUC critique says: “the onus of addressing unemployment appears to focus on the individual, rather than on the broader structural forces at play. The [bank report] disregards in particular the measures that governments can take to create new, quality jobs, such as proactive industry planning, public sector job creation, and public investment – including in labour intensive sectors with strong social and environmental dividends, such as infrastructure, care and the green economy.” Finally, the World Bank claims that labor regulations are “excessive” and threaten employment, and advocates lowering already meager worker protections.

Once again, the World Bank has not forgotten its raison d’être; it has not suddenly changed its stripes. Elephants will continue to not fly.

Did we really expect otherwise? A look at the World Bank’s record provides all the evidence anyone could want of it being one of the world’s most destructive agencies, an organization dedicated to enhancing corporate plunder and imposing punishing austerity. A one-two punch with the International Monetary Fund. Both organizations do the bidding of the Global North’s multi-national corporations through playing complementary roles.

^{Three Gorges Dam, a project funded by the World Bank that displaced 1.3 million people (photo by Christoph Filnkössl)}

When I last checked in at the World Bank, in 2018, the bank was in the process of completing its “World Development Report 2019: The Changing Nature of Work,” which opened with quotes from Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. That was merely a feint. What we soon read in examining the report is that the problem is “domestic bias towards state-owned or politically connected firms, the slow pace of technology adoption, or stifling regulation.” Sure, jobs are disappearing, but that’s no problem because “the rise in the manufacturing sector in China has more than compensated for this loss.” Essentially, the World Bank was advocating that we become sweatshop workers in China. What else to do? “Early investment in human capital” — in other words, pay lots of money for advanced degrees you won’t be able to use — and “more dynamic labor markets,” which is code for gutting labor protections and making it easier to fire workers.

Elephants didn’t, after all, fly five years ago, either. 

The World Bank has even declared itself above the law. Unfortunately, at least one U.S. court agrees. A lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington on behalf of Indian farmers and fisherpeople ended with a ruling that the World Bank is immune from legal challenge. The bank provided $450 million for a power plant that the plaintiffs said degraded the environment and destroyed livelihoods. The court agreed with the World Bank’s contention that it has immunity under the International Organizations Immunities Act. The World Bank thus was declared the equivalent of a sovereign state, and in this context is placed above any law as if it possesses diplomatic immunity. Another suit, however, also filed by EarthRights International against the World Bank for its role in turning a blind eye to alleged systematic human rights violations by a palm oil company in Honduras for a project it financed, was allowed to proceed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019. That case, however, appears to yet be decided by the trial court. So the World Bank can sometimes be sued in the United States legal system but it remains to be seen if it will have to shoulder any responsibility.

The World Bank has a long history of ignoring the human cost of the projects it funds. The World Development Movement, a coalition of local campaign groups in Britain, reports that the World Bank has provided more than US$6.7 billion in grants to projects that are destructive to the environment and undermine human rights, a total likely conservative. To cite merely three of the many examples, the World Bank:

• Loaned an energy company in India more than $550 million to finance the construction of two coal-fired power plants. Local people, excluded from discussions, were beaten, their homes bulldozed and reported reduced food security and deteriorating health as a result of the power stations.
• An Indonesian dam, made possible by the World Bank’s $156 million loan, resulted in the forcible evictions of some 24,000 villagers, who were subject to a campaign of violence and intimidation.
• In Laos, a hydropower project made possible by World Bank guarantees displaced at least 6,000 Indigenous people and disrupted the livelihoods of around 120,000 people living downstream of the dam who can no longer depend on the rivers for fish, drinking water and agriculture.

A study of World Bank policies, “Foreclosing the Future” by environmental lawyer Bruce Rich, found that:

“Drawing on Bank studies, project evaluations and sectoral reviews, it is shown that the World Bank still suffers from a pervasive ‘loan approval culture’ driven by a perverse incentive system that pressures staff and managers to make large loans to governments and corporations without adequate attention to environmental, governance and social issues. In 2013, Bank Staff who highlight social risks and seek to slow down project processing still risk ‘career suicide.’ … [The bank] has continued to binge on enormous loans to oil and gas extraction, coal-fired power stations and large-scale mining generating environmental damage, forest loss and massive carbon emissions.”

Destroying the environment in the service of short-term profits

Want more? The World Bank has provided nearly $15 billion in financing for fossil fuel projects since the 2015 signing of the Paris Climate Accords. An October 2022 report by Big Shift Global, a coalition of 50 environmental organizations across the Global North and South, notes that despite World Bank claims that it would end financing for upstream oil and gas production, it has other avenues to promote fossil fuels. One of these methods is to send funds to a financial institution, which in turns sends the money to the fossil fuel project. Another is to provide non-earmarked funds but make the money conditional on instituting reforms encouraging fossil fuels.

The biggest fossil fuel funding, according to the Big Shift Global report, is $1.1 billion for the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline, a gas distribution project in Azerbaijan. Another $600 million went toward a gas storage project in Turkey and another eight projects were given at least $100 million by the World Bank. Projects that the World Bank has financed include expansion of coal. Other work by the World Bank includes $2.8 billion so that Ghana could move its energy mix from mostly hydropower to majority fossil fuels, and pressured Ghana to enter into gas contracts that causes it to pay $1.2 billion annually for gas it doesn’t use, which also has put a greater debt burden on the country. 

The World Bank also encouraged Guyana to use a Texas law firm that has Exxon as a major client to rewrite its petroleum laws, while providing money for oil and gas development in Guyana. That development will benefit Exxon as the fossil fuel multinational snagged a contract under which Guyana doesn’t receive any of the profits until the costs of the field are paid off. In other words, the Big Shift Global report says, “Exxon can continue to charge Guyana for every newly developed oil field. It could take decades before the money trickles down to the people.” 

^{Protest at the World Bank (photo by “Jenene from Chinatown,” New York City)}

The World Bank attempted the same whitewashing stunt with its fossil fuel funding, once issuing a report lamenting global warming while completely ignoring its role in worsening global warming. At the time of that whitewashing report, the bank was providing billions of dollars to finance new coal plants around the world. By any reasonable standard, the World Bank is a key organization in the concatenation of processes that has brought the world to the brink of catastrophic climate change. The policies of the World Bank and its sibling, the International Monetary Fund, have constituted non-stop efforts to impose multi-national corporate control, dismantle local democratic institutions and place decision-making power into the hands of corporate executives and financiers, the very people and institutions that profit from the destruction of the environment.

A trail of evictions, displacements, gross human rights violations (including rape, murder and torture), widespread destruction of forests, financing of greenhouse-gas-belching fossil-fuel projects, and destruction of water and food sources has followed the World Bank. It works in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund, whose loans, earmarked for loans to governments to pay debts or stabilize currencies, always come with the same requirements to privatize public assets (which can be sold far below market value to multi-national corporations waiting to pounce); cut social safety nets; drastically reduce the scope of government services; eliminate regulations; and open economies wide to multi-national capital, even if that means the destruction of local industry and agriculture. This results in more debt, which then gives multi-national corporations and the IMF, which enforces those corporate interests, still more leverage to impose more control, including heightened ability to weaken environmental and labor laws.

The World Bank compliments this by funding massive infrastructure projects that tend to enormously profit deep-pocketed international investors but ignore the effects on local people and the environment. The two institutions are working as intended, to facilitate the upward distribution of wealth, regardless of human and environmental cost.

It’s a clean sweep! Not one country guarantees workers’ rights

There is no respite from class warfare. Past annual Global Rights Index reports issued by the International Trade Union Confederation have invariably shown that there is no country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights and the 2022 edition is not only not an exception but finds that repression of labor organizing is increasing.

The best any country scored for the 2022 ITUC Global Rights Index was “sporadic violations of rights,” and only nine countries, all in Europe, managed that. That’s down from the dozen classified at this rating two years ago. Capitalism, and its neoliberal variant now four decades old, is not becoming more gentle. It is doing what it must do, what the holders of capital must do to keep their party going.

Let’s take a look at a few general highlights before we highlight individual countries. Or should we say lowlights? Then again, they are “highlights” for industrialists and financiers.

• 87% of countries violated the right to strike.
• 79% of countries violated the right to collective bargaining.
• 77% of countries excluded workers from the right to establish or join a trade union.
• 74% of countries impeded the registration of unions.

In its executive summary, the Global Rights Index report says:

“Workers are on the front lines as they face the impact of multiple areas of crisis: historic levels of inequality, the climate emergency, the loss of lives and livelihoods from the pandemic, and the devastating impact of conflict. And workplaces are the front line in the fight for democracy. Brutal governments know how much this matters when four out of five countries block collective bargaining and one third of countries violently attack workers. Trade unionists have been murdered on every continent. Where people stand up for rights and social justice they are silenced with brutal repression.”

Lest we think these are problems only in undeveloped countries, there are Global North countries that score poorly in the index, including Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada and the United States. Almost all trends are getting worse, in all parts of the world. Several indicators — including the right to strike, the right to establish and join a trade union, the right to trade union activities and the right to civil liberties — have steadily worsened since the survey’s annual reports began being issued in 2014. “The number of countries which exclude workers from their right to establish or join a trade union increased from 106 in 2021 to 113 in 2022,” the report said.

The Global Rights Index ranks the world’s countries from 1 to 5, with 1 the best category, denoting “sporadic violations of rights,” defined as where “Violations against workers are not absent but do not occur on a regular basis.” The nine countries given a rating of 1 are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Sweden. (These are green on the report’s maps.)

Rating 2 countries are those with “repeated violations of rights,” defined as where “Certain rights have come under repeated attacks by governments and/or companies and have undermined the struggle for better working conditions.” Countries with this rating include the Czech Republic, France, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain. (These are yellow on the report’s maps.)

Rating 3 countries are those with “regular violations of rights,” defined as where “Governments and/or companies are regularly interfering in collective labour rights or are failing to fully guarantee important aspects of these rights” due to legal deficiencies “which make frequent violations possible.” Countries with this rating include Argentina, Britain, Canada, Mexico and South Africa. (These are light orange on the report’s maps.)

Rating 4 countries are those with “systematic violations of rights,” defined as where “The government and/or companies are engaged in serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers, putting fundamental rights under threat.” Countries with this rating include Australia, Chile, Greece, Peru, Senegal and the United States. (These are dark orange on the report’s maps.)

Rating 5 countries are those with “no guarantees of rights,” defined as “workers have effectively no access to these rights [spelled out in legislation] and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labour practices.” Countries with this rating include Brazil, China, Colombia, South Korea and Turkey. (These are red on the report’s maps.) In addition, there are countries with a 5+ rating, those with “No guarantee of rights due to the breakdown of the rule of law.” Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen are among the 10 counties listed in this category, and are colored deep red.

The ITUC says it represents 200 million workers in 163 countries and has 332 national affiliates. It determines its ratings by checking adherence to a list of 97 standards derived from International Labour Organization conventions. Those 97 standards pertain to civil liberties, the right to establish or join unions, trade union activities, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike.

Worth noting is the poor rating of the United States and Britain, the two countries that most like to scold other governments and present themselves as democratic beacons that the world should emulate (or else). The United States has consistently been given a 4 rating, including in 2020 and 2019. The 2022 report notes a myriad of union-busting offensives used by employers there. The United Kingdom, which has had 3 and 4 ratings in past years, has seen workers summarily sacked and replaced with agency workers at below minimum wage. 

Conditions are not appreciably better in those countries most eager to follow U.S. and British leads. In Canada, failures to comply with collective-bargaining agreements are a “common occurrence,” union leaders are prosecuted for participating in strikes and workers participating in strikes are fired. In Australia, criminal charges are filed against unions and union leaders as intimidation tactics, and governments not only allow employers to refuse to bargain with unions but intervene in disputes on the side of employers. Both countries are ranked worse than where they had been two years ago.

And so it goes, to channel Kurt Vonnegut. In its latest report on “the world of work,” the International Labour Organization (ILO) said “three out of five workers lived in countries where labour incomes had not yet recovered to their level prior to the crisis,” while inequality and the gender gap in pay remain large. A separate ILO report said “a return to pre-pandemic performance is likely to remain elusive for much of the world over the coming years,” with a global deficit of 52 million full-time equivalent jobs. Tens of millions of adults fell into extreme poverty during the Covid-19 pandemic.

These dismal results aren’t any surprise to anyone paying attention. The wealthy, and especially billionaires, have only gotten richer at everyone else’s expense during the pandemic. In just the first year of the pandemic, 2020, the world’s billionaires accumulated an additional trillion dollars. At the same time, corporations across the Global North enrich speculators and their top executives with trillions of dollars in dividend payments and stock buybacks and the world’s governments, through their central banks, handed out an astounding $10 trillion in free money to the financial industry through “quantitative easing” programs, the technical name for intervening in financial markets by creating vast sums of money specifically to be injected into them and thereby inflating stock-market bubbles. Despite these incredible sums of money, there is never more than crumbs for working people. It’s always austerity for those whose work actually creates the wealth that industrialists and financiers divvy up between themselves.

But central bank interventions are profitable for the financial industry, and that’s all that matters. The object of capitalism is to make the biggest possible profit, regardless of cost to employees, consumers, anybody else, the environment or the community; providing a useful product or service is incidental to the goal. Forcing down wages and working conditions through legal manipulation and outright force and violence is always prominent among capitalists’ methodologies to accomplish their goals. The International Trade Union Confederation’s sad results are not the result of some mysterious failure; they come standard with the system.

If you work in the U.S., you don’t know how bad you have it

It’s no secret that United Statesians are more ignorant of the world beyond their national borders than the peoples of other countries. That ignorance serves a purpose. How can you keep screaming “We’re Number One” and believing you have it better than the rest of the world if you are in possession of accurate information?

For example, most United Statesians remain blithely unaware that they have among the worst health care outcomes of any advanced capitalist country while paying by far the most money. A Commonwealth Fund report, for example, found that the U.S. “placed last among 16 high-income, industrialized nations when it comes to deaths that could potentially have been prevented by timely access to effective health care.” As one of the few countries on Earth without a national health care system, health care is a commodity for those who can afford it, not a right as it is almost anyplace else.

The U.S. also has one of the highest rates of inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient; among the countries of Europe only Bulgaria has worse inequality. The United States has the widest gap between pay and productivity gains among advanced capitalist countries and U.S. corporations haul in gigantic sums of money, sometimes millions of dollars per employee, but pay their employees minuscule percentages of their haul. Declining lifespans in the U.S. are considered a “silver lining” in corporate boardrooms because pension costs are lower. And thus it comes as no surprise that the Covid-19 pandemic has widened inequality still further, with the world’s industrialists and financiers adding literally trillions of dollars to their accumulated wealth during 2020.

That was a long introduction to yet more bad news. Not only are wages stagnant and living standards decaying, but working people in the U.S. are working longer hours. A study published in the peer-reviewed journal Socio-Economic Review found that, among 18 European and North American countries, the percentage of employees in the U.S. working at least 50 hours per week is the highest, at about 18 percent for the period 1990 to 2010. The paper, “Extreme work hours in Western Europe and North America: diverging trends since the 1970s” by Anna S. Burger, found that total rising — about 15 percent worked such hours for the period 1970-1989, a time frame in which the U.S. also had the highest rate.

^{(Author: CIPHR Connect)}

Nonetheless, it is not only in the U.S. that more people are forced to work at least 50 hours per week. The study examined Canada, Switzerland and 15 members of the European Union (including Britain, then a member) and in only one country, France, did the percentage of people working excessive hours decline from 1970-1989 to 1990-2010. France, Sweden and Switzerland had the lowest rates, each less than 5 percent. Canada was second to the U.S. at 17 percent and also showed the largest jump, from about 6 percent in 1970-1989.

Work more or else

European Union law is supposed to prohibit working more than 48 hours per week, but the study by Dr. Burger noted that several countries have adopted opt-out clauses. Working beyond 48 hours, even with the exemptions, requires the employee consent. But given the one-sidedness of working relations, an employee could find it difficult to refuse consent. Dr. Burger wrote:

“[T]he choice whether to work long hours is not entirely, or even mainly, left to the preference of the individual but is guided by policy and collective socio-economic institutions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the most relevant work time tendencies of the past decades are shaped by liberalizing trends in labour market policies, industrial relations arrangements and labour market structures not only in the Anglo-Saxon world but also on most parts of Continental Europe, rather than by regime-conform developments.” [page 3]

Some of the people working excessive hours are high-paid professionals such as lawyers or investment bankers. But low-wage workers are increasingly forced to work long hours because they can’t survive otherwise.

“At the bottom of the skills scale, an increasing number of workers are becoming labour market outsiders who are in atypical, or precarious, employment or unemployment. … The practice of very long hours is particularly wide-spread among outsiders for two reasons. First, due to a lack of regulatory protection and high replaceability, outsiders are in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis their employers. Not complying with an employer’s request for overtime might result in an outsider’s immediate dismissal and replacement. Secondly, in many cases, outsiders consent to, sometimes even initiate, working very long hours in order for their income to reach subsistence level. In today’s increasingly unequal economies, an ever-larger number of low-skilled workers must compensate for their relatively low hourly pay by allocating more time to work. While this decision is formally voluntary, in substance it is not because the choice is strongly shaped by the restrictive political economy environment.” [page 8]

Working conditions in the EU are deteriorating, but employees in the U.S. have less protection and more meager unemployment benefits. The pressure to work long hours is more intense there than in Europe, and employers often find it more profitable to squeeze extra hours out of employees rather than hire someone to lighten workloads. Another product of the extreme individualist ideology U.S. capitalism fosters.

And although overall working hours have actually declined over the past half-century, the rate of that decline has been far slower in the U.S. than in the European Union. A paper by Robert J. Gordon and Hassan Sayed, “The Industry Anatomy of the Transatlantic Productivity Growth Slowdown,” found that for the period 1950 to 2015, there was a decline of 37 percent in average employee working hours for the 10 largest EU countries (a drop from 2,250 hours to 1,560 hours) as compared to a decline of only 12 percent for U.S. employees (2,020 hours to 1,780 hours). So much for John Maynard Keynes’ famous prediction that we’d be working 15 hours a week in the future.

U.S. working people work 220 hours per year more than do EU workers — that’s five and a half weeks of extra work!

That sobering comparison is no surprise when we make a comparison of mandatory paid days off. Among the 42 countries that are members of the OECD and/or the European Union, there is only one country with zero paid days of vacation or holidays under the law — the United States. Seven countries require workers be guaranteed 25 or more vacation days per year. Another 25 mandate at least 20 days. Each of those countries also mandate anywhere from eight to 15 paid holidays. Among the 42 countries surveyed, 34 legally require 28 or more days, led by Austria and Malta (38 each) and another half-dozen requiring 36. Turkey, with 12 days of mandatory paid time off, is next worst to the zero of the U.S.

Working conditions are not getting better

The pandemic may be making the above conditions worse. Working at home has led to a working day of two and a half hours longer for employees in the United States, Canada and Britain, according to a report by a business technology company, NordVPN Teams. The company, CNN reported, examined data sent via servers to calculate employee working hours. There were “no significant drop of business [virtual private network] usage at lunch time indicating potential short lunch breaks while working remotely.”

Other surveys have reached similar conclusions. A report by the U.S. staffing firm Robert Half said nearly 70 percent of professionals who work remotely because of the pandemic work on the weekends and 45 percent say they regularly work more hours during the week than they did before the pandemic. For front-line workers not able to work at home, stress and mental health difficulties have increased sharply, with problems particularly acute in the U.S. due to its inability to provide coherent responses to Covid-19 and the chaos triggered by extreme right operatives who created the “Tea Party” organizing the anti-science and anti-intellectual spectacles opposing measures designed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

Where does all this lead? To health problems and shorter lifespans. A study conducted by researchers at the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization reported that excessive working hours led to 745,000 deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease in 2016, a 29 per cent increase from 2000. The study found that, in 2016, “398,000 people died from stroke and 347,000 from heart disease as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. Between 2000 and 2016, the number of deaths from heart disease due to working long hours increased by 42%, and from stroke by 19%.”

Austerity and economic dislocation have taken their toll around the world, but the already existing harshness of life in the United States on top of austerity and dislocation takes a particular toll there. Nearly half a million excess deaths occurred in the U.S. from 1999 to 2015 from drug and alcohol poisonings, suicide, and chronic liver diseases and cirrhosis. A paper published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PNAS found this increase in the death rate was limited to the U.S. among advanced capitalist countries.

We’re perhaps taken in more bad news than we can reasonably digest. It’s understandable to not wish to take in too much bad news at once. For readers with knowledge of the world, none of the statistics presented above make for a surprise. It is thus tempting to ask: Would the particularly toxic brand of nationalism practiced by millions of United Statesians continue as virulently were the above statistics widely known? Sadly, perhaps it would. If we were to summarize the discourse of U.S. nationalists, it would be: “We’re number one! We can kill more foreigners in less time than any other country! USA! USA!” Is being able to cheerlead for the world’s biggest military really worth working so many hours for such dismal results?

Class warfare intensifies as labor rights violated around the world

As bad as conditions have traditionally been for labor worldwide, 2020 has seen conditions deteriorate even more. As in past years, there is not a single country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights. And although every country continues to violate labor rights, the extent of those violations grows, continuing a sad pattern of class warfare.

The International Trade Union Confederation has issued its annual Global Rights Index, and only 12 countries managed to be listed in the Index’s top ranking, the countries that are merely “sporadic” violators of rights. But those countries are hardly paradises (this is capitalism, after all). One of those dozen, the Netherlands, had no less than seven of its corporations listed among companies violating workers’ rights. Those were not necessarily isolated instances. The report said, “In the Netherlands, unions observed an increasing trend to shift from sectoral agreements to company agreements with the intent of minimising labour costs in return for employability. Companies often used the competitiveness and employability argument with their employees to incite them to accept lower conditions of work at the enterprise level. In addition, companies, including Ryanair, Transavia, Jumbo Supermarkets, Gall & Gall, Action and Lidl supermarkets, tended to circumvent collective bargaining with representative unions.”

If that represents the “best” of conditions for working people, the world is a mighty unfair place. Which it obviously is, given the ever more intense pressure bearing down on working people as the neoliberal era continues to make capitalism ever more miserable for those whose work produces the profits swelling the pockets of industrialists and financiers.

As in past years, the Global Rights Index report divides the world’s countries into five categories with increasing levels of rights violations. They are as follows:

• 1. Sporadic violations of rights: 12 countries including Germany, Ireland, Norway and Uruguay (green on map above).
• 2. Repeated violations of rights: 26 countries including Canada, France, Japan and New Zealand (yellow on map).
• 3. Regular violations of rights: 24 countries including Argentina, Australia, Britain and South Africa (light orange on map).
• 4. Systematic violations of rights: 41 countries including Chile, Mexico, Nigeria and the United States (dark orange on map).
• 5. No guarantee of rights: 32 countries including Brazil, China, Colombia and Turkey (red on map).
• 5+ No guarantee of rights due to breakdown of the rule of law: 9 countries including Libya and Syria (dark red on map).

Hypocritical finger-wagging

Consistent with past years of the Global Rights Index, the United States, which loves to hold itself up as an exemplar of democracy and civil rights, is among the lowest-ranking countries — the U.S. has consistently had a ranking of 4 for “systemic” violations. The International Trade Union Confederation, in supplemental materials discussing U.S. violations, noted that the National Labor Relations Board has made a series of anti-union rulings, including allowing retaliation against striking Wal-Mart workers, while U.S. law permits anti-union discrimination, restricts workers’ rights to form unions of their own choosing, and places severe barriers against union organizing. 

The United Kingdom, second only to the U.S. in regular scolding of other countries, is ranked in the middle of the pack, same as a year ago. The report’s discussion of Britain reported “the number of people employed on a stand-by basis, ‘zero-hour contracts,’ at between 200,000 to 250,000 which demonstrates the prevalence of underemployment in the UK. Under these contracts employees have to be available for work but are not guaranteed a minimum number of hours. These contracts create income insecurity for workers and also undermine family life.” Additionally, the report noted multiple barriers to British union organizing.

Canada, although ranked higher than Britain or the U.S., is no paradise despite the image its governments like to project. The report noted that in Canada there are many categories of workers, ranging from domestics to professionals, barred from organizing, and there are severe legal restrictions limiting the right to strike.

A Wal-Mart protester is led away during a Black Friday action in Sacramento, California. (Photo via Making Change at Walmart.)

Globally, the report states that violations of workers’ rights are at a seven-year high. Direct attacks on unions highlight the degradation:

“The trends by governments and employers to restrict the rights of workers through violations of collective bargaining and the right to strike, and excluding workers from unions, have been made worse in 2020 by an increase in the number of countries which impede the registration of unions — denying workers both representation and rights. … A new trend identified in 2020 shows a number of scandals over government surveillance of trade union leaders, in an attempt to instil fear and put pressure on independent unions and their members.”

The global pandemic has only made conditions worse:

“These threats to workers, our economies and democracy were endemic in workplaces and countries before the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted lives and livelihoods. In many countries, the existing repression of unions and the refusal of governments to respect rights and engage in social dialogue has exposed workers to illness and death and left countries unable to fight the pandemic effectively.”

Class warfare goes on and on and on

Some of the sobering statistics gathered by the International Trade Union Confederation tell a grim story:

• 85 percent of countries violated the right to strike.
• 80 percent of countries violated the right to collectively bargain.
• Workers were arrested and detained in 61 countries.
• Workers experienced violence in 51 countries.

The Confederation, which describes itself as a coalition of “national trade union centres” encompassing 332 affiliated organizations in 163 countries and territories, determines its ratings by checking adherence to a list of 97 standards derived from International Labour Organization conventions. Those 97 standards pertain to civil liberties, the right to establish or join unions, trade union activities, the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike.

The Confederation’s report is one more illustration of the race to the bottom. The International Labour Organization estimates that more than 470 million people worldwide were unemployed, underemployed or “marginally attached to the workforce” in a report issued in January 2020, with 2 billion people (61 percent of the global workforce!) informally employed. That report was issued just before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, triggering a dramatic economic crash that had been overdue, thanks to the instability of capitalism that regularly causes downturns. Inequality and lower pay are endemic around the world, and the costs of housing, because it is a capitalist commodity, rises far faster than incomes. The continual imposition of austerity on working people contrasts dramatically with the trillions of dollars thrown at financiers and industrialists since the pandemic began.

Capitalism promises nothing but more one-sided class warfare. We’re long past due to try something different.