Mediaboss Marketing

Dear comrades,

Working people of all backgrounds are uniting around issues such as racist violence, health care, climate change, womens reproductive rights, along with labor and immigrant rights. There is widespread opposition to the neo-fascist Trump agenda. At the same time, thousands of young workers and students have taken to online platforms during the Covid-19 lockdown and are demanding socialist-oriented reforms and even going as far as proclaiming themselves communists, socialists, and Marxists, in an effort to fight for a better world. In recent months, the Communist Party USA has experienced an uptick in membership. This growth is occurring as Bernie Sanders has withdrawn from the 2020 presidential race. People are fighting madand with good reason.

Celebrities such as Britney Spears and Chance the Rapper and well-known climate strike activists such as Ilhan Omars daughter, Isra Hirsi, have called for everything from redistribution of wealth to outright communism. In response to Britney Spears who stated, We will feed each other, re-distribute wealth, strike. We will understand our own importance from the places we must stay. Communion moves beyond walls. We can still be together, we agree with you and applaud your enthusiasm and support for a strike wave and the redistribution of wealth. To Chance the Rapper, who asked, When we start over, will we try socialism or communism? we welcome your calls for a left alternative to the current failing capitalist system. To Isra Hirsi, who has organized and led youth climate strikes over the past year, we admire your bravery in declaring yourself a communist publicly on Twitter despite the intense xenophobic attacks on your family from the extreme right. We welcome these radical conclusions.

On a more personal note, I want to express how I am feeling as a Communist living in the middle of New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic. I am angered how health care benefits have been slashed by the Trump administration in the past few years, the same neoliberal presidential administration which denied the existence of climate change and called the coronavirus pandemic a Chinese hoax. I am infuriated at how my partner and I were sick with the coronavirus three months ago and had fevers that reached over 107 degrees with only cold rags to relieve the pain, since our health care plans did not provide full coverage.

I am frustrated with the growing amount of homelessness I see out in the streets. I am enraged at how five CPUSA comrades have passed away in the past two months as a result of the do-nothing policies of our ruling class in the face of this pandemic. I am saddened by the fact that I will never again be able to talk to comrades Frank Sterns or Richard Hoyen about their experiences in Vietnam and Jamaica. I am furious at how the Trump administration continues its efforts to starve Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and others into submission during a pandemic and even remains silent after the recent terrorist attack on the Cuban Embassy in D.C. and the recent mercenary-led coup attempt against the democratically elected president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. I am outraged at how Bernie Sanders progressive, socialist-oriented platform was dismissed by Republicans and Democrats alike for being too radical.

What exactly is too radical when it comes to saving workers lives and jobs? To those of you who share my frustrations and angry sentiments, I extend a hand of friendship and comradery in this time of crisis. A better world is possible, but it starts with us getting unified, organized, and radicalized. People come to the struggle through workplace exploitation, student debt, fear of fascists with guns, racist police brutality, corporate greed, the environmental catastrophe, and so on. Therefore, the radicalization process taking place through such issues or brought to light through the electoral campaign of Bernie Sanders or reading Marxist literature on ones own is welcomed by our Party. We all start somewhere, and collectively learn to be productive, militant Communist activists in the wider struggle for democracy and socialism.

Its also important to note that communists and socialists understand the meaning of collectivity. Marxists should be in touch with the working-class struggle and belong to a Communist Party in order to play a role in the collective. Before there was a united communist party in Russia, there were Marxist study groups and a factionalized Russian Social Democratic Labor Party to which Lenin himself belonged. Lenin wrote in 1902 that,

in order to unite all of these factions into one whole, in order not to break up the movement while breaking up its functions, and in order to imbue the people who carry out the minute functions with the conviction that their work is necessary and important, without which conviction they will never do the work, it is necessary to have an organization of tried revolutionaries.

In other words, YES, leftists need to unite and work together. But left unity must be built on working-class unity. Otherwise, what is the point of a mass movement for socialism that is not worker led? I believe that the Communist Party USA is the revolutionary working-class political party that this country needs to help usher in a better world for people like you and me. We wont do it without other organizations and movements but it also wont be done without a revolutionary working-class party.

I learned this lesson years ago as a young college student and militant of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE). The older veterans there did not hold back when expressing gratitude for the CPUSA veterans who fought in the Abraham Lincoln brigade against fascism during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

This is the movement I wanted to join. I invite you to the International Communist Movement as well through membership in the CPUSA.

We are building a mass Party and movement for socialism in the U.S. All independent leftists and progressives out there reading this who feel that they want to be part of a revolutionary, working-class political party are invited to join the Communist Party USA in our fight for a full economic/political democracy, peace, jobs, equality, and green socialism. For too long, the U.S. Left has fallen victim to capitalist individualism inspired by American exceptionalism and right-wing Protestant-like mentalities (We love the left-wing Protestants!). Ill do my own thing because only my interpretation is the purest has led to the formation of thousands of evangelical denominations as well as a handful of middle-class radical organizations.

Our party puts working-class unity around issues as a top priority, since only then can left unity be possible based on ideology. We stand for unity over a factionalism that resembles cell division. All socialist, communist, Marxist, and progressive-minded people interested in fighting for a better world in which democracy and socialism triumph over the horrors we are living now are invited to check out our websites theoretical articles and educational webinars at cpusa.org. Most importantly, you are invited to join!

Historically, only communist parties have ever been able to unite working and poor people together under a common cause and guide them to a revolutionary victory over the capitalists. We invite you to join in this struggle. Together, we can unite and fight against the extreme right and lay the foundations for socialism as a united working-class!

In solidarity,

Comrade Maicol David

Image: Jacob Anikulapo, Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Read more from the original source:
An open letter to all leftists, socialists, and communists - Communist Party USA

May 19, 1972

AID MUST BE WITHOUT STRINGS

Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman today declares that Bangladesh needs help from friendly countries but such assistance must be without any strings attached. Speaking at the inaugural session of the convention of National Awami Party (Muzaffar) the prime minister says that they cannot accept any aid belittling of the country's independence.

Bangabandhu further says that economic independence can only be achieved by adopting a socialist economic system. There is no alternative to socialism to save the people of the country, he adds. He urges the members of the NAP and Communist Party to cooperate with the government to build socialism in the country.

Referring to the nationalisation of banks and industries, the prime minister says the government will not allow private ownership of these important national institutions because once it is allowed it becomes really difficult to get rid of such an exploitative system.

The prime minister assures that the government will take serious action against hoarders, smugglers and criminals.

GOVT INITIATIVE TO BRING NAZRUL TO BANGLADESH

The government has taken an initiative to bring rebel poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, along with his family members, to Bangladesh. Earlier, the poet's family accepted the government's invitation to shift to Bangladesh. This year, the poet's birthday will be observed nationally in his gracious presence.

TK 10 CRORE MORE FOR TEST RELIEF

The government will allocate Tk 10 crore more for test relief, informs Relief and Rehabilitation Minister AHM Kamaruzzaman. Earlier, the government undertook test relief programme worth Tk 16 crore under which new roads were built and canals were dug in rural areas. These public works created employment for a large number of jobless people, says the minister. Referring to the food situation the Minister says that the government is trying its best to reach food-scarce regions. He assures that the food situation will improve significantly soon after arrival of food aid from various nations. India tops the list in terms of providing food aid to Bangladesh, followed by the US and the Soviet Union, shares the minister.

SOURCE: May 20, 1972 issue of Dainik Bangla

Read the original:
There is no alternative to socialism - The Daily Star

By some accounts, Western leaders have beaten the Left at its own game. A Conservative British prime minister has come around to enacting half of Labours demonized 2019 manifesto. Trump is intervening directly in the production decisions of large US corporations. And the center-right government of the largest German state is providing free food and drink for staff in all hospitals, care homes, and similar institutions.

Once again, establishment media have reason to proclaim that we are all socialists now, as Newsweek magazine did after Obamas $787 billion stimulus package passed Congress at the height of the financial crisis in early 2009. A few months before that famous Newsweek cover, Venezuelan president Hugo Chvez had already mocked comrade Bush for being to the left of me now after announcing plans to invest heavily in large US banks in an attempt to stabilize them.

Then, as now, the intention behind throwing neoliberal dogma overboard is clear: capitalism has to be saved, by any means necessary. To avert socialism, we must briefly become socialists, a senior editor of conservative British newspaper The Times asserted in late March. But what kind of socialism is used to save capitalism from itself and what does its co-optation mean for us?

For some from the editors of the Financial Times to Spanish prime minister Pedro Snchez this is a war economy. And this historical reference is an apt one. When they focused national resources on waging World War I, major European governments took control of key industrial plants, the labor market, food prices, and even rents steps that stood in stark contrast to their previous laissez-faire attitude toward the decisions of private capitalists.

Even at the time, some left-wing observers regarded these instances of state planning and redistribution as heralding the imminent progress toward full socialism. Writing in 1915, the earliest proponent of this theory of war socialism, the Social-Democrat Paul Lensch emphasized the egalitarian core of the German states effort to provide food security to the whole population. It turned out, however, that what looked like the seeds of a postcapitalist transformation did not by itself produce a successful revolution in Western Europe.

The term war socialism soon came to be used interchangeably with the concept of an economy that seeks to safeguard military supplies and the power of the political elite while also minimizing worker unrest. Yet this is but a caricature of socialism for it serves the interest of eventually restoring capitalisms normal functioning. British prime ministers Lloyd George and Churchill, and US presidents Wilson and Roosevelt, were temporarily inspired by something resembling the popular image of socialism as public ownership, self-sufficiency, and collective responsibility.

Despite the overall aim of preserving the status quo, these makeshift socialist programs did carry some risks for the anticipated return to capitalist normality. Roosevelts promise of economic democracy let the genie of egalitarianism out of the bottle to win the war, and it would be difficult to put back in, as historian Quinn Slobodian has noted. When war-related industries were ramped down and some price controls lifted in 1945, millions of striking workers in the United States demanded a greater share of the countrys wealth.

In Europe, postwar governments were inspired by the successes of wartime state planning and nationalization in their attempts to rebuild all manner of infrastructure and social services. But with the strike wave receding and key trade union tactics outlawed in the United States and orthodox economic planning largely treated as the end point of socioeconomic transformation in Europe the existential threat to the post-1945 reboot of capitalism evaporated.

There are two important lessons we can draw from todays war socialism. First, as much as the Left has succeeded in changing the discourse on austerity, deprivation, and the welfare state in the UK, the United States, and many other parts of the world, we should be careful not to celebrate the introduction of seemingly socialist policies now. As in the past, these measures are being introduced with the specific purpose of maintaining, rather than overcoming, the inequalities of the status quo.

Lacking adequate policies of his own, Boris Johnson in the UK has appropriated parts of Jeremy Corbyns radical platform most obviously by subsidizing the wages of those at risk of losing their jobs and by renationalizing the railways. Something similar is happening in the United States, with the Trump administration planning to pay for the COVID-19 treatment of the uninsured and considering public ownership of large US tech firms. But Merkel, Macron, Johnson, and Trump are all pursuing the same goals as other war socialists have before them: to mobilize the population for the all-encompassing task of weathering the emergency and the inevitable economic shock that is to come, and to guarantee a postcrisis return to ordinary capitalist exploitation.

Just as in previous iterations, todays war socialism feeds on caricatural versions of what socialism might look like and fails to come anywhere near them. One such caricature appears in the memes shared by Andrew Yangs fan base: when the sun sets in Yangland, robots will do all the work for us and every adult will get $1,000 per month to spend on whatever she desires. And indeed, in the time of COVID-19 the old idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is gaining considerable traction. The center-left Spanish government is moving fast to implement existing plans for something close to a basic income, and many US citizens and green card holders have received a onetime payment of $1,200 that has been compared to Yangs proposals.

At first glance, these measures flatten vast wealth inequalities more effectively than the wage guarantees given by several Western and Southeast Asian states. However, the Spanish and US versions of a basic income also illustrate its limits. The monthly sums mooted in Spain seem too low to live on, and contrary to initial plans it appears as if only those below a certain income threshold will be eligible. In the United States, the main shortcoming of the onetime stimulus check is that it is not universal after all: millions of non-US citizens without certain visas as well as dependents such as college students will not receive the cash payment.

Another socialist clich that currently seems to inspire governments battling the pandemic is the mobilization of a militant working class in the service of the common good. In the UK, hundreds of thousands responded within days to a government call for volunteers to help out in the (dramatically underfunded) British health and social care system. Smaller-scale efforts to recruit both trained and untrained volunteers have been made by the French, Italian, and German governments, among others.

And yet, since untrained volunteers are not being paid, those who are relatively privileged are much more likely to volunteer than those, often in marginalized social positions, who live from paycheck to paycheck and/or have caring responsibilities. Even volunteer nurses and doctors cannot be sure they will be adequately paid under these programs. What is more, anecdotal reports are piling up that suggest the UKs volunteer program may largely be a PR stunt, perhaps even coupled with the intent to collect data. This remains to be seen, but self-organized mutual aid groups are certainly shouldering the lions share of providing such help for the sick and elderly in the UK desperately trying to make up for gross governmental negligence.

For political and economic elites, this inability to realize even overly simplistic versions of socialism is a virtue. As in the post-1945 years, the genie will have to be shoved back into the bottle eventually. It would be far too dangerous to allow the presumed egalitarianism of a universal basic income, or the collective spirit of being engaged in large-scale community activism, to succeed. But where does that leave those of us who would like to see an emancipated society, and are willing to work toward it?

The second vital lesson we can draw from historical periods of war socialism is that we must not be complacent about what they offer. Do we really know what a viable socialist (or communist, or emancipated) society might look like? Of course, established politicians and business leaders are profoundly disinterested in this question. But we must not follow their lead and assume that existing progressive visions are all there is. After all, existing visions are rooted in particular times and places. They dont provide all the answers and to some extent, they themselves had to be invented, created out of nothing, through political struggle.

How should the Left respond to the cash payments and volunteer programs currently implemented by centrist and right-wing governments? The question that underpins UBI proposals is how to provide everybody with the basic necessities of life (and more). But especially at a time when economic production, supply chains, and consumer markets are grinding to a halt, what good is free money if you cant buy everything you need and want anyway?

There is no shortage of alternative ideas. The Lefts program for the coming months might contain the phased introduction of certain universal basic services: initially health care and staple foods (obviously), but also safe housing (which has been provided to a fraction of the homeless population e.g., in the UK and in the United States) and childcare (to avoid impossible trade-offs as parents start returning to work while schools and nurseries may still be closed). These services may be seen as the foundational economy,access to which should not be left to our income or consumption decisions. From the months of dual power preceding the 1917 October Revolution to the community care programs run by the Black Panthers, plenty of historical experience can help us further flesh out such an approach.

At the core of the mobilization of volunteers that has taken place across Europe lies the question of how to make social use of peoples free time, ideally by tapping into moments of widespread enthusiasm for a common cause. Again, there are plans for that. Post-Keynesians have long argued that the state should act as an employer of last resort, paying those who are out of employment but willing to work a sustainable wage to carry out socially necessary jobs. The idea of rotational employment the equal sharing of necessary time and of free time among all members of the population can be traced as far back as the Paris Commune. And for cultural theorist Fredric Jameson, collective action can only last if it can channel the excitement of the conspiracy: namely, the conspiracy of tirelessly building a new society.

We have to ask what kind of employment is being promoted, and ultimately what is employment for? as feminist legal scholar Donatella Alessandrini insists. And here is where radicalized versions of UBI and volunteer programs intersect: What is employment for, if not for delivering exactly those foundational goods and services to which all of us should have free access?

In short, a concrete second demand for a COVID-19-era left could be to enroll all of those who are currently on furlough, or losing their jobs, in a (centrally funded, but locally organized) community work program through which free access to health care, staple foods, safe housing, and childcare are implemented.

The collective spirit of fighting a pandemic might, eventually, tip over into the spirit of building a society beyond wage labor and beyond the commodification of everything. Building socialism involves figuring out what shape it might take in light of material conditions, and Western governments reactions to the pandemic form part of our particular conditions. But so, too, does our own attitude toward past visions of socialism including its much-heralded wartime variant.

More here:
No, We Don't Want a War Economy to Deal With the Pandemic - Jacobin magazine

It seems that we can not only bail out many businesses in trouble but do so for all of them, in every industry and sector, regardless of their longer-term prospects. The Chancellor has had to do that to keep the productive capacity of the economy alive. But the longer this goes on, the more firms will really be the living dead, never to reopen in the same form again. Similarly it might seem that the state can pay the wages of millions of people indefinitely. Yet the longer it does so, the more of those furloughed workers will find they are actually unemployed.

As businesses try to emerge from the nightmare, every one of them that accepted assistance will find that regulators, politicians, trade unions and campaigners feel entitled to a say on how they deploy their capital in future. Every dividend payment will be criticised, even if vital to the overall health of pension funds. Each new hire will be deemed too expensive, even if needed for the business to compete; each new automated process condemned for destroying jobs even though important to raise the long-stalled productivity of the economy.

Against this background, Left-wing thinkers will be able to advance more easily an agenda of state intervention, and unaffordable ideas such as a national basic income. Most conveniently of all for them, the magic money tree that Conservatives have spent years saying does not exist appears to have been found. If we need a few hundred billion we can conjure it up, or so it must seem. Never mind the awful truth, that one day it will be paid for in higher inflation, a much-devalued currency or crippling taxation. The concept of endless billions whenever we need them is now firmly in the public mind. And if we need taxation, those of a socialist disposition will say, this is the moment to tax wealth, land and corporations. With millions unemployed, how else, they will argue, can higher spending be financed?

Worst of all, the boundary between personal freedom and state power has been shifted dramatically, and in some countries it will never move fully back. Surveillance, monitoring and restrictions are an everyday reality for many months to come. There is a danger that, subtly and imperceptibly, the public will grow accustomed to a smaller space for individual liberty and a bigger role for the state, changing the acceptability of other ideas supposedly to secure a better future through larger, more powerful and more dominating governments.

Conservatives, and other champions of an open, free and enterprising society based on sound money, need to think about this now. Otherwise they will emerge from the dark and tragic tunnel of this crisis to find themselves in a landscape they dont recognise. Of course, many will say this is not the time to think about this. In reality it is always vital to consider the battles of the future when fighting those of today. Even at the height of the Second World War, the time was taken to consider the aftermath: Beveridge designed the modern welfare state and, at Bretton Woods, the post-war financial system was laid out.

Being fully aware of the titanic political struggle to come is crucial to make the right decisions about how to help this country and others recover. There will be a natural and justified desire to learn from the crisis and create a better world after it. Fundamental parts of that are improved international cooperation, pandemic prevention and national resilience, all of which have been found wanting in recent weeks. But the centre-Right of politics will also have to work hard, and think deeply, to present a vision of a more environmentally sustainable society, with worthwhile work for all and fairness to young generations.

It is richer capitalist societies that are best at cleaning up their environment, inventing new forms of energy and fostering the innovations we need to save ourselves from climate change. We need to show how tax and regulation can push market forces to do that, not forever tell everyone how to live.

To get growth going again, dispensing with some of the rules that limit house building and business development in high streets is the way, not more requirements and planning zones. Using the tax system to encourage entrepreneurship among younger people should be a priority. Above all, building a world-class education system for people of all regions and backgrounds is the most pressing need.

Ministers in this country can begin to capture the new political ground by designing such imperatives into the plans for the recovery of our economy and society, centred on the three es: employment, education and environment. For if people are left to turn only to socialist ideas in the wake of these terrible weeks, todays tragedies will turn into the lifelong torment of tomorrow.

Continue reading here:
The Right must plan now if we are to save the post-Covid world from the torment of socialism - Telegraph.co.uk

I certainly didnt expect to spend the start of 2020 wading through nearly 700 pages about the 1892 Hamburg cholera epidemic, but Im glad I did. Death in Hamburg, British historian Richard J. Evans social history of the epidemic, is a page-turner, his passion for the topic nothing short of infectious.

At the time it was published in 1987, the contemporary parallel was the spread of HIV-AIDS. The parallels with our sorry times are, if anything, more direct. Its a tale of official indifference, denial, opportunism by the wealthy and callousness towards the masses.

It is also the story of how a disease brought about a profound political and economic upheaval, such that up until WWI, the history of the city was measured before and after the epidemic. Upended particularly was the relationship between social classes the old rulers being discredited and those previously sidelined decisively entering the stage. The epidemic, in other words, changed everything.

********

Cholera is caused by bacteria that grow on marine animals which, when they get into the water supply and are consumed by humans, cause violent diarrhoea, which can lead to death in as little as 24 hours. It is a horrible fate, like a thousand devils ... pulling at ones innards or perhaps sawing ones body in half at the same time, as Evans elsewhere describes it.

The disease killed 10,000 of Hamburgs 800,000 inhabitants in just over six weeks during August and September 1892. Around half of those affected died, many before they could receive medical attention.

Several factors led to the bacteria entering the citys water supply. One was their arrival on a migrant train from Russia, and the unsanitary disposal of waste from overcrowded migrant accommodation. Another was the drought of 1892, which enabled the bacteria to travel further upstream in the river Elbe (from which Hamburgs water supply was sourced) than they would have otherwise. But the most important was the most scandalous: neglect on the part of the citys authorities to construct a water purification system in advance of the epidemic.

Following a 1873 cholera outbreak, the Hamburg Medical Board pressed for a filtration system for the citys water supply. Eight years later, the Citizens Assembly agreed in principle, but fears about possible incursions on the interests of the wealthy, especially within the Property Owners Association, which was well represented in the Citizens Assembly, derailed the project.

Ultimately, priority was given to projects that furthered the citys prestige rather than helped its residents, such as, the building of the new Town Hall , a grandiose Renaissance edifice designed ... to provide a symbolic reaffirmation of the waning power of the City Fathers.

This reflected the politics of the city: economics ruled. The largest European seaport and the fourth richest in the world at the time, Hamburg was controlled by an oligarchy of wealthy merchants, who dominated the citys administration and appointed all its senior officials including medical and public health officers. It was a bastion of laissez-faire liberalism, where trade was paramount.

This largely explained the authorities disastrous response. When the first cholera-like cases were noted, the official reaction was denial. When the outbreak could no longer be denied, they dragged their feet implementing measures to stop contagion, prioritising their commercial interests over lives.

Robert Koch, a prominent microbiologist and advocate of the (now accepted) contagionist theory of disease, was sent to Hamburg by the German central government to take control of the outbreak. But he first had to wage a political battle against the Hamburg establishment, which favoured the prevailing miasma theory. This posited that disease was the product of a cloud-like miasma that rose up from the ground, particularly where conditions were dirty, an explanation preferred in Hamburg, not for its scientific merit, but because it meant blame could be laid at the feet of lazy, unclean and irresponsible poor people rather than the city authorities.

Koch insisted on a variety of measures including the imposition of quarantine, disinfection and cleaning of public places and homes, the distribution of free, uncontaminated water and a public information campaign about how to stop the spread which Hamburgs officials only begrudgingly agreed to implement.

Even then, health was far from their first priority. Mass dissemination of disease control information, for example, was not implemented until a whole week after it was agreed to. In addition to being deadly, this delay was political. Not possessing the popular support needed to carry out the task itself, the Senate was forced to swallow its pride and call on the only force that did: the local branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

But days were allowed to pass before the party was contacted, as Evans argues likely so that the distribution would take place on the next available Sunday (28 August) and so avoid any disruption of work, with its consequent loss of profit to the employers. Had the distribution taken place on the 26th or 27th, thousands of Social Democratic party workers overwhelmingly manual labourers would have had to take time off work and because at the request of the authorities, their bosses wouldnt have been able to penalise them for it. This would have saved lives, but at the cost of all-important profits.

The same logic applied in the treatment of the many migrants in Hamburg, at the time an entry point for western Europe; thousands were temporarily housed in the city. Concerned not to be held financially responsible for them in the event of quarantine measures being imposed, the citys authorities rushed to give clean bills of health to the migrant ships waiting to leave, despite being aware that cholera had infected the city. This not only killed many passengers, it also spread the infection to other parts of Europe and the US.

As the traditional rulers of Hamburg were increasingly discredited through repeated episodes like this, the previously shunned and ostracised Social Democrats were able to gain a greater following. The Hamburg branch of the party was conservative even by the reformist Social Democratic Partys standards, but it was nevertheless able to connect with the popular anger created by the epidemic.

On 4 November, the party held nine simultaneous mass meetings, which attracted a combined attendance of 30,000 according to the bourgeois press at the time. All had a common theme, wrote Evans, that the epidemic had been caused by the incompetence and greed of the Hamburg Senate. Speakers agitated for greater health care, public sanitation and an extension of suffrage to undermine the power of the merchants.

The Social Democrats were pushing on an open door the poor were affected by cholera more acutely than the wealthy. In part this was because of the crowded and filthy conditions workers and the poor were compelled to live in. But, more importantly, wealth provided protection from the disease. The wealthy had the ability to read and therefore take note of public notices, the means to flee the city and access to servants with time to boil water and sanitise their houses for them. For Hamburgs poor, most of the necessary sanitary measures were simply not practical, even if they were made aware of them.

Workers and the poor were also the most hard hit by the economic effects of the epidemic, especially unemployment. Thousands were suddenly without work, and remained so months later. In January 1893, 18,000 workers were registered as looking for work on the docks; fewer than 5,000 were successful. In the same month, 70 workers occupied the city engineers department demanding jobs, and the mounted police were called to quell a riot outside a labour exchange.

While on the one hand dismissing the unemployment problem as Social Democratic bluster, the wealthy also self-servingly invoked it as a reason to roll back health measures and get the economy back to normal. Supposed concern on the part of the Chamber of Commerce for the very many groups affected by redundancies and dismissals featured prominently in its campaign to remove quarantine regulations and restore manufacturing and trade.

In the epidemics aftermath, the level of popular anger meant the ruling class had no choice but to offer reforms of various sorts, particularly in housing, planning and public sanitation. A further motivation was concern that the city might be taken over by the German central government and lose its self-governing status, so calamitous was the perception (and reality) of the Hamburg authorities mishandling of the epidemic.

But as 1892 gradually receded into history and the threat of absorption into greater Germany subsided, these reform efforts quickly petered out. Unfortunately, the Social Democrats the only force in Hamburg that could have forced the authorities hand and successfully pushed for real gains for workers were unwilling to lead the necessary social rebellion.

Their organising efforts later in the epidemic, honourable though they were, were largely in response to the radicalism of the bourgeois press in the face of official incompetence. Left to its own devices, the party had tended more to embrace the spirit of social unity and cooperation, and in so doing prove its loyalty to the state it claimed to oppose.

Indeed, the editors of the partys Hamburg publication, the Hamburger Echo, not only refused to publish correspondence critical of the authorities in relation to the epidemic; they voluntarily passed it on to the police. They also warned the police about actions by unemployed workers that they suspected, partly because they were organised by competing syndicalists, might become unruly.

The whole episode was largely seen as a dress rehearsal for 1914, when the party leadership more dramatically proved its loyalty to the state by betraying its principles and supporting the war effort at the outbreak of world war.

It took a major strike by dock workers in 1896 to renew the drive to action and win real reforms. The strike involved more than 16,000 port workers and lasted for nearly three months. Despite Social Democratic efforts to bring it to an end and its eventual defeat, the strike aroused enormous sympathy and led to real improvements in the living conditions of Hamburgs poorest workers. The actions of mostly unorganised casual labourers had achieved what none of the organised political forces had been able to.

Nevertheless, as Evans points out, the transformation that the epidemic brought in the citys official politics was reflected in the fact that all the citys Reichstag seats were won by the Social Democrats in the 1893 national elections, and they made such gains in local elections that in 1906 the citys ruling Senate changed the voting qualifications to reduce the chances of a Social Democratic takeover. Prior to this the party had enjoyed no official representation at all.

The great cities of the industrial age, Evans notes in his conclusion, are so advanced in the complexity and fragility of their existence that even relatively small-scale disasters can plunge them into a state of chaos and helplessness. Indeed, Hamburg was an advanced city that took pride in its independence and was widely considered modern and civilised. It was run by upstanding captains of industry who considered themselves superior to most. Yet thousands died when cholera arrived in 1892, not because the disease could not be prevented, but because the commercial interests that dominated the city administration resisted the disruption to business and trade that was required to prevent it.

This tragedy is playing out again, 130 years later. In societies much better placed to avoid such human suffering, hundreds of thousands are needlessly suffering and dying. In 1892, those responsible paid a high political price. Lets hope they do again.

See the original post here:
Socialism, capitalism, and cholera in 19th-century Hamburg - Red Flag