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BOGOTA, COLOMBIAIn the midst of a pandemic, hitchhiking isn't a very good way to preserve social distancing and stop the spread of a killer virus. Yet thousands of Venezuelans are now trying to hitch rides along Colombia's roads and highways.

The situation isn't new. For years, I have seen groups of young Venezuelansoften entire families carrying infants and heavy luggagetrekking on foot on the highway that leads from Tunja, a city some 95 miles northeast of Bogota's colonial city center, to the Colombian capital.

The striking scenes regularly include makeshift, roadside camps for nighttime shelter from the Andean cold and collective washing sessions at gas station bathrooms. Venezuela's so-called "21st century socialists" created a 21st century Vlkerwanderung, a mass migration movement comparable in scale to the large waves of people that rolled across Europe and the Mediterranean between the 4th and 6th centuries A.D., during the Western Roman Empire's decline and fall.

To speak of civilizational collapse isn't far-fetched. According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, the projected number of displaced Venezuelans6.5 million people, or as much as 19 percent of the country's total population according to another estimatecould soon surpass that of Syria, where civil war has unleashed a humanitarian calamity.

As I wrote when I visited the Colombian border city of Ccuta, an uninformed observer might think that the hundreds of Venezuelan evacuees sleeping in parks or pedestrian roundabouts were escaping war or natural disaster. They had actually escaped a man-made catastrophe known as socialism.

Seen from Colombia, the reversal of our neighboring country's fortune defies belief. I grew up in Bogota in the 1980s and early '90s and remember the regard for Venezuela as a land of opportunity almost akin to the United States. At school, Venezuelan candy was an exotic luxury. Older, well-heeled Venezuelans will still share fond memories of their Colombian nannies or gardeners.

While the worst phase of the drug war devastated Colombia, hundreds of thousands of nationals migrated to Venezuela, which was still Latin America's richest nation in GDP per capita. In 1998, Colombia was under siege by the communist FARC guerrillas, who took over the drug trade and used its enormous proceeds to mount an offensive that left the country on the verge of becoming a failed state. Then, in December of that year, Venezuelans elected Hugo Chvez as their president.

Since that time, Colombia has avoided Venezuela's fate and received nearly 1.5 million of its refugees. Colombia didn't attract large-scale immigration by becoming a free market outpost such as Hong Kong or Singapore; it simply managedbarelyto steer clear of full-throttle socialism of the Chavista or Fidel Castro variety.

While this extreme geopolitical volte-face was two decades in the making, the worst pandemic in a century has brought about a new type of upheaval in a matter of weeks. In its belated yet draconian response to COVID-19, the Colombian government is eroding economic and individual liberties to a degree that Chvez himself would have endorsed with gusto.

The Colombian economy has ground to a halt. Mayors of towns and cities have imposed curfews, only allowing citizens to shop for basic goods on certain days, depending on their gender or national ID number. Food is being rationed, the government is fixing prices, and, unsurprisingly, the authorities are abusing their increased and arbitrary powers. In fact, the police are frisking people's groceries at checkpoints, purportedly to halt the circulation of "non-essential" items, and handing out fines to those who leave home to buy medicine if they deem their documents lacking.

Venezuelans who have sought refuge in Colombia are all too familiar with chronic shortages, price controls, mass unemployment, and the petty abuses of power ("Papers, please!") that mark the turn toward a police state. There is no incentive for them to stay in a country that has rapidly come to resemble their own.

For weeks, I have seen Venezuelans in large numbers heading northeast along the Bogota-Tunja highway, as they return to their native land.

Many were scraping by in Bogota, as Bloomberg reports, often as informal vendors or beggars on now-empty streets, and could no longer pay for housing. Once evicted, they have no choice but to go home. In Venezuela, migrants "have more of a support network to fall back on" if they return, even if the health care system collapsed years ago, a Migration Policy Institute expert tells Bloomberg. While this is true, other factors are also at work.

In 2019, Venezuelan dictator Nicols Maduro tacitly recognized socialism's inevitable failures and took a series of steps to reverse the country's total economic breakdown. As The Wall Street Journal reported at the time, this included a limit to frenzied money printing, mandatory salary increases, and devastating price controls, which produced yearly hyperinflation levels of 2.6 million percent. Maduro also eased restrictions on the private sector, which was at an utter standstill, and freed the flow of cash somewhat.

Crucially, much of the money now circulating in Venezuela consists of U.S. dollars. As the Journal explained, this results from large inflows of remittances from abroad, but also from a loosening of strict currency controls for importers and private businesses that now accept dollar payments.

The de facto dollarization of Venezuela has come at a good time. In Colombia, the local currency has lost over 26 percent of its value against the dollar in the last year due to relatively large amounts of debt and plunging oil prices. Now, as Colombia faces a grim economic future in the near term, any good news out of Venezuela, however slight, could offer hard-pressed immigrants an additional incentive to return home.

For Venezuelan socialists, however, any economic reprieve might come too late. In March, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted Maduro, several of his henchmen, and two of their FARC allies on drug trafficking and related charges. President Donald Trump then sent the largest maritime anti-narcotics operation in the region's history towards Venezuela's Caribbean coast.

The Trump administration argues that it doesn't seek to imprison a foreign head of state since it considers Maduro's dictatorship to be illegitimate. Instead, it recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaid, Trump's guest at his last State of the Union address, as interim president.

Although I oppose the drug war, I must admit that in terms of pure realpolitik, Trump's aggressive stance toward Venezuela is both sound and necessary. It certainly contrasts with the Obama years, when the U.S. strengthened Maduro's hand with its appeasement of Cuba's communist regime, the power behind the scenes in Venezuela, and its gullible support for the previous Colombian government's peace deal with FARC, whose leaders gained unearned seats in Congress even though thousands of their former comrades remain up in arms, as they traffick large amounts of cocaine and terrorize certain areas of the countryside.

Are Venezuelans returning home because they sense an imminent end to their socialist nightmare? Maduro is under unprecedented amounts of pressure; at $15 million, the bounty on his head puts him alongside characters like Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian dictator ousted in 1990 after an American invasion.

Although a military onslaught against Venezuela would be ill-advisedespecially if it involves subsequent "nation-building"Trump certainly should hope for Maduro's ouster, possibly as a result of betrayal by regime-insiders or negotiations with the U.S. and the largest stakeholders in the country, including Vladimir Putin. However, whether Maduro ends up like Noriega or Fidel Castro, who died as a happy 90-year-old despot, is anybody's guess.

As with so much else, the U.S. presidential election could determine the result.

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Venezuelan Migrants Are Returning Home, Forced to Choose Between Ruinous Socialism and Colombia's Pandemic Authoritarianism - Reason

Bernie Sanders had dropped out of the presidential race, leaving Joe Biden with a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination. Yet, what Sanders has accomplished is truly remarkable. Not only are mainstream politicians considering the likes of free college tuition and Medicare for All, but for the first time in my life large numbers of Americans are critical of capitalism as an economic system and seriously assessing socialisms merits. This, then, is a good time to examine the premises underlying the rival worldviews and explore their social implications.

Capitalism operates on the assumption that resources are scarce and people compete to access them. We live in a dog-eat-dog world, where every person is out for him or herself. As Max Weber argued in his classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, such a philosophy motivates people to work hard and be productive as they vie to get ahead. The downside is a tendency to discourage empathy and support for the less fortunate. People may cooperate, but only insofar as they perceive cooperation to yield a competitive advantage. If one can benefit by stabbing erstwhile allies in the back, it is only rational to take advantage of the opportunity. Furthermore, since those who are successful inevitably wish to maintain their wealth and power, they will likely use that wealth to maximize political control.

Socialisms underlying premise is that were all in the same boat. Were the boat to sink, everyone would drown; therefore, it makes sense to work together to keep it afloat. Should some shipmates struggle with a challenge to their health and welfare, we all benefit by helping them regain their fitness and resume their status as productive members of the crew. The challenge is to orchestrate collective actions to promote the common interest. Such coordination frequently requires a degree of centralization, which can place inordinate power in the hands of a few. Should the leaders actions be misguided, everyone may suffer.

Real life, of course, is rarely driven by a single unified worldview. Even in a hard-core capitalist society, collective interest and self-sacrifice often predominate in families. Successful capitalists sometimes donate fortunes to charity. Prominent religious figures may take vows of poverty. And well-off business people can be thoughtful and considerate. To nurture such traits, however, requires one to overcome the egoistic ethos that undergirds our economic philosophy. Conversely, far too many leaders in collectivist societies parrot socialist ideals but, when they come to power, disenfranchise the oppressed, stifle opposition, and promote the interests of a new elite.

So, what is the solution?

As the 19th-Century German philosopher GWF Hegel observed, everything is filled with contradictions and constantly in flux. The challenge is to maintain the constructive elements of the old system while embracing the new. Based on my decades as an anthropologist, Ill offer the following principles:

1. Human beings are social animals who need one another and flourish in an environment of mutual support. The stress of isolation resulting from attempts to control the current COVID-19 pandemic makes that clear.

2. An element of competition exists in most societies. But competition need not be for material resources, especially in a society sufficiently productive that, with a fair system of distribution, everyone might access basic nourishment, health care, education, and the other building blocks of a fulfilling life. Instead of striving for material rewards, we could compete to be as kind, compassionate, and generous as possible. The reward would not be the accumulation of great fortunes, but recognition for our contributions to the common good. With such an ethos, we could harness the dynamism of capitalist competitiveness while incorporating the collective consciousness that socialism has the potential to impart.

3. Socialism, like any system, has advantages and risks. To minimize the risks, we need to lock in democratic principles. Without question, people make mistakes. Yet, until we locate Platos philosopher king, in the long run well be better off should decisions reflect popular will than if they are dictated by an autocrat even a well-meaning one. In short, for socialism to reach its potential it must be democratic socialism.

Not everyone will embrace my perspective. But perhaps we can agree to: learn from history and glean useful lessons from the diverse cultures all around us; consider ways in which we might incorporate the most constructive aspects of each way of life to fashion a humane and satisfying synthesis. If we proceed with such a quest, Sanderss campaign will be remembered as a breathtaking success.

Rick Feinberg is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Kent State University.

Excerpt from:
Commentary: Bernie Sanders and the merits of Democratic Socialism - Akron Beacon Journal

In the United States, in spite of their own conservatism and of the even greater conservatism of the Republican Party and the president, the Democrats are starting to succeed in turning into legislation Bernie Sanders policies on assistance to the unemployed and universally free healthcare. The irony of this is that while the Democratic Party in its primaries gave preference to a more moderate Joe Biden as their preferred presidential candidate, now they are pushing Bidens opponent, Bernie Sanders policies into legislation.

When the lives of millions are menaced by the health crisis and economies are threatened by resultant collapse, all of a sudden there evaporates the opposition to governments commanding the economy and to their skyrocketing welfare spending.

Rampant socialism is starting to rule Western democracies, where the word socialism was hitherto a dirty word. Who could have believed this even a few weeks ago?

It has been the captains of industry together with their private media mouthpieces, prominently including the worldwide Murdoch news outlets, which have brainwashed the public in democracies to privatise most government assets.

Banks, energy, telecommunication, the oil industry and even much of education and health have been privatised. All Western governments were urged to get out of running enterprises.

As a result most of the control over media, energy, banks and even education was taken away from national governments and were acquired by giant private corporations.Hence Western democracies rely only on taxes rather than having any earnings from lucrative and strategically important enterprises, like the energy and steel industries, telecommunications and national airlines.

Autocratic China went in the opposite direction, where the party-state government has become the controlling shareholder in just about every major Chinese-come-transnational enterprise. This enabled them to amass massive earnings to subsidise its enterprises to reduce the prices of goods and services to such an extent to which private transnationals cannot do because even their largest ones cannot match the Chinese Governments power of the purse.

China was therefore able to drive much of Western and Third World industries out of business and gain near monopoly power in vital industries such as textile, electronics and steel production where they became the factory of the world.

But with coronavirus, national governments in Western democracies started to commandeer major enterprises to produce what their nations needed, such as ventilators and masks. They provided major subsidies to companies to allow them to survive.

Theres been increased questioning of how Western democracies have allowed themselves to become dependent on Chinese-produced goods and of the need for governments to work with multinationals to bring much production back to Western democracies. For example, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, in his press conference on April 5, questioned the need of his state to having to have obtained ventilators from China because the US no longer produces enough of such strategic health equipment.

The realisation in Western democracies that their governments have to have control over major industries to be able to cope with recurrent crises such as epidemics and the effects of climate change may actually drive them to embrace democratic socialism to a much larger extent than they were willing to do so before. This could reduce the comparative superiority of Chinese state capitalism over the combined international power of Western social democracies.

Until now Chinas authoritarian regime has significantly outperformed Western democracies economically ever since it combined capitalism with major government ownership of capital and political control over the whole economy. But the Achilles heel of the Chinese system is the lack of accountability of the autocratic regime.

It would not be impossible for the Western and developing democratic states to maintain democracy while also gaining substantial ownership and control over lucrative strategic industries. This way the democratic states could have more control over their sovereignty and could also subsidise universally free health and education and provide extensive public housing and adequate unemployment benefits.

If so, world democracies may not only survive but become economically, politically and morally superior to the ruthless autocracy in China and by alliance could provide a buffer to Chinas expanding power to rule the world.

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Socialism used to be a dirty word, but is that the way were heading? - Starts at 60

Interesting that our governor just announced that Georgia is opening up. Two weeks ago, he said from his podium that he'd just learned (!) that the virus can be passed asymptomatically. Now we're opening for business ... what changed? Sadly, this is becoming a partisan pandemic and a poorly managed one at that.

What we need is a modern iteration of the Marshall Plan to mobilize the awesome resources of our federal government to remove barriers and red tape to facilitate supply chains to all localities with the necessary testing reagents and associated equipment required. We are Grant, not McClellan, and we need to face this crisis for the life-and-death threat that it is.

Denny Pistoll

Rising Fawn, Georgia

British NHS is hardly free

I was surprised to read the April 4 Associated Press article (page A3) headlined "We love you NHS: UK health service gears up for virus peak." The whole article was about all the problems NHS is having. What a misleading headline. However, the article also said the NHS is free. Wow, you should check your facts. Ask anyone in the UK about what a chunk comes out of their paycheck every week for their National Health Insurance. My first job in England in 1955, I made an extremely small paycheck of five pounds. One pound was deducted. Half for my NH deduction, and the other half for income tax.

Helen Blair

Apison, Tennessee

Socialism: 'Failed human politics'

To the writer of the April 19 letter to the editor, 'Socialism simply reflects human rights:"

Look at history for what socialism really is; it is not "simply" human rights. The letter writer states "socialism" is "simply" about health care for every citizen, ability to afford college, able-bodied people working 40 hours living securely, and urgency for climate change to be taken seriously. To recognize these attributes of ideals being basic to human rights is admirable and potentially possible in America.

However, it is not these attributes that make the belief of them possible in socialism. Some people somehow think socialism is charity. Socialism is the systematic taking from hard-working people of all walks of life to give to everyone, even those unwilling to contribute to that work. Look at the vast collection of documentation. History continues to fact-check about socialism and its inequity created within the human spirit. Why bother to work hard when most will be taken away and passed to others? Nothing about socialism is "simple." The decency and basic rights of humans start when the human spirit is nurtured with respect, dignity and honor.

Socialism is not charity but humanly failed politics. Knowing our history helps us not repeat human failures, like socialism.

CeCe Smith

Signal Mountain

Please consider plasma donations

If I am infected by COVID-19 and survive it, I would be thrilled to donate plasma to share my antibodies to those in need. As it is, I love to give my platelets via Blood Assurance to total strangers. I urge TFP readers to do likewise.

My problem is that I have no motorized transportation of my own. I need someone to drive me.

Harry Geller

Read more here:
Modern Marshall Plan is needed and more letters to the editors - Chattanooga Times Free Press

As states plan billions in budget cuts to schools By Alexander Fangmann and Nancy Hanover 29 April 2020

On April 22, Haymarket Books hosted an online event entitled Remaking Schools in the Time of Coronavirus. Additionally sponsored by New Press and Rethinking Schools, the webinar was attended by up to 1,500 people. The speakers were Seattle Public Schools ethnic studies teacher Jesse Hagopian, Cornell professor Noliwe Rooks and University of Washington Bothell professor Wayne Au.

It would be an understatement to describe the event as irresponsibly complacent. The forum was thoroughly indifferent and hostile to the fate of public education, the plight of education workers and students, while peddling divisive identity politics and support to the big-business Democratic Party.

Remaking Schools largely ignored the unprecedentedin fact existentialbudget cuts facing education. To the extent that the speakers addressed the cuts, the collective wisdom of the group was spelled out in craven fashion by panelist Noliwe Rooks who posed the problem as What is the least we can accept?

School districts across the US are beginning to announce massive budgetary shortfalls as they confront the transition to online learning, providing laptops or other devices to students, and maintain feeding programs. These measures, while horrific, will be only a down payment as workers and young people are forced to bear the economic brunt of the ongoing bailout of Wall Street. On April 16, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans to cut $827 million from the citys education department next year.

Any teachers who may have mistakenly hoped the Haymarket broadcast would put forward a fighting program in defense of public education would have been sorely disappointed. The pseudo-left academics made clear not only that they accept the inevitability of massive cuts, school closures and privatization, butloyal union supporters that they aresimply asked to be consulted in the process. This reactionary pro-capitalist outlook was unsurprisingly combined with the promotion of the right-wing Democratic candidate for president, Joe Biden.

Despite the phony socialist pretentions of the webinar participants, this pro-capitalist stance is par for the course. A longtime union hack, Hagopian heads the Social Equity Educators caucus of the Seattle Education Association and played a despicable role in the betrayals of teachers struggles in 2015 and 2018. A former member of the now-defunct International Socialist Organization (ISO), Hagopian is an editor of Rethinking Schools magazine along with Au. Both have been spokesmen at Haymarkets Socialism Conference. Haymarket Books has operated a conduit of financing from the Democratic Party to the ISO and the pseudo-left ensconced within academia. Rooks, a professor at Cornell, has marketed herself as a black, female expert on race-based theories of public education.

Of course, educators should be very concerned that the ruling class is planning to drastically remake education. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, state tax revenues are anticipated to fall by $500 billion over the next three years as a result of necessary measures taken to halt the spread of COVID-19. In two announcements characteristic of the deep-going measures being adopted nationally, the governor of Hawaii plans to cut teacher pay by 20 percent and the Kentucky state senate has voted to withhold teacher pension funding if educators do not agree to cuts in retirement benefits.

When the overt crisis in New York City came up for discussion, Rooks acknowledged the state is looking at 50 percent in cuts and, Im hearing that story all over the country. But, signaling her terms, she said, given that, we just cant do what we did before. She elaborated, If you are going to consolidate schools, moving teachers around and coming up with experimental techniques, then you need, she explained, folks from the community at the table. Addressing herself to union members, teachers, activists, Rooks said, Now is the time to figure out, what is the least we can accept. what will we lay our bodies in front of to keep from happening.

Denying the terrible effect such cuts will have on the entire working class, Rooks concluded by promoting her role as spokeswoman for various identities, concluding, we know the kids that will get the short end.

For his part, Hagopian introduced the idea that the current situation is a textbook example of Naomi Kleins shock doctrine, in which billionaires exploit moments of crisis to further line their pockets. But none of the panelists addressed the ongoing bailout of Wall Street to the tune of trillions of dollars or contrasted this endless enrichment of the elite to the mantra that there is no money for schools.

To do so would cut across their support for the unions and the Democrats. The recent Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, supported by the Democratic Party, including former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, allocated a mere $30.75 billion for education, or 0.122 percent. Further, a substantial amount of this funding is being made available through block grants, allowing states substantial flexibility in spending these funds, including on charter schools and private and religious schools, or even to shore up other areas of their budgets.

Instead, Rooks expressed gratitude that this did not happen about 10 years ago, when it seemed to me the privatization movement was riding a little higher than maybe it is now. Expressing uncritical support for the Democratic Party, Rooks continued, saying Joe Biden has said very clearly, I think we need to be putting more money into traditional public schools, and not necessarily talking about the charter schools as much, or privatization as much or vouchers as much. About 10 years ago that was not the narrative. This happening then, I think we would have an organized movement for privatizing everything. Indicating once again that she preaches advocating for the least possible, she promotes Biden for not advocating privatization as much as Trump!

Hagopian and Au agreed with this sentiment, with Au saying, This would have been much scarier than it is now, and Hagopian adding, Had this happened a decade ago when they were just gaining steam for all their corporate education reforms, we would have been in real trouble. The pseudo-lefts, of course, deliberately cover over the fact that it was the Obama-Biden administration that spearheaded the privatization drive 10 years ago. Further, Wall Streets current plans for rationalizing education, including vastly expanding and profiting from online learning, are being ramped up.

Hagopian further falsified the struggles of the last two years, claiming, Over the last 10 years, weve built a massive resistance to that shock doctrine. Weve actually had incredible victories. Hagopian cited the worn-out lie that teachers strikes resulted in incredible victories, claiming inroads against high-stakes testing and support to undocumented students.

This amounts to a cynical cover-up for the role of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers in betraying the struggles of teachers which arose largely independently and in opposition to the unions. As the WSWS has extensively reported in the course of these teacher strikes, the unions were instrumental in shutting down the strike wave and pushing through sell-out agreements that failed to address the decades of defunding of public schools. This was done in cities like Chicago and Seattle in the name of social justice unionism, which accepted school closings and poverty pay in exchange for more ethnic studies and phony promises that have not been kept.

The only real demand expressed by these figures is that community membersby which they mean trade union bureaucrats and pseudo-left academics like themselvesbe involved in deciding what gets cut and how education is restructured in the future.

This fact was underscored when the group discussed a New York Times editorial that noted, A learning reversal of this magnitude could hobble an entire generation, the speakers appeared nonplussed. Au said, Part of me is sympathetic to that. Part of me also isnt, in the sense that, were already dealing with a system that was focusing almost solely on tested subjects. So, it was this hyper focus on a particular kind of academics that I dont think was particularly healthy for our students.

Not that Im opposed to folks learning about how to do math, or to read critically, or to write, so dont get that twisted, but its more about what is this whole focus on these very rigid notions of curriculum and things that are focused mainly on passing the test. What does that do to the quality of education overall? In this postmodernist vein, Au continued, Some things might be lost, but theres also going to be some things gained. What do we feel like is important for us as communities and as people to learn about and be with in terms of knowledge in this world?

Educators, students and parents must reject the bankrupt perspective of this anti-socialist cabal of self-seeking, well-heeled pseudo-lefts. Rethinking Education has performed a service. It has once again exposed the pseudo-left and practitioners of identity politics as unapologetic advocates of capitalism. Teachers should have nothing but scorn for those such as Hagopian, Au and Rooks, who preach capitulation to the bipartisan attempts to destroy public education.

The WSWS Teacher Newsletter urges all educators to assimilate the lessons of the fight against the pseudo-left and begin the struggle to form rank-and-file committees independent of the unions and the two political parties of big business. Only a socialist policy can insure that children can be educated and provided with a future. The vast wealth squandered on Wall Street and the military must be seized and redirected to fund all the social needs of the working class, including halting the pandemic and universal access to high quality public education.

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Pseudo-lefts ask: What is the least we can accept? - World Socialist Web Site