This International Women’s Day, the Labor government has tried to reassure Australian women that things are moving in the right direction by pointing to all the ways it has supposedly made life better for us since 2022.
“This Government has achieved many firsts”, federal Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said in a press release on 3 March, “including the lowest gender pay gap, 11.5 percent, and a Federal Parliament with over 52 per cent women”. Similarly, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reminded women at an IWD breakfast that Labor had changed the single parent payment to help single mothers get by.
Awkwardly for Gallagher, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) reported that the gender pay gap in 2023-24 was actually 21.8 percent on average. The WGEA calculation includes base salary, overtime, bonuses and additional payments. It also accounts for part-time and casual work—categories in which women are disproportionately represented. According to its report, “this offers a more complete picture of the real remuneration differences between women and men in Australia”. 
Gallagher appears to have quoted the pay gap calculated by the Bureau of Statistics, which reports only base salaries for full-time employees, a much more limited statistic. But hey, why let accuracy get in the way of some election spin?
Single parents can now access support payments until their youngest child turns 14, up from 8. This is a welcome change given the cost-of-living crisis affecting many single mothers. However, let’s not forget that it was former Labor (and first woman) Prime Minister Julia Gillard who lowered it from age 16 in 2012. That the Labor party hasn’t even expanded the scheme back to 2012 levels doesn’t exactly make it an anti-sexist hero.
In New South Wales, public sector nurses have been campaigning for a 15 percent pay rise, taking strike action against the Labor state government. This overwhelmingly female-dominated workforce is among the lowest paid in the country. The union is specifically highlighting this fact in its fight with the government, linking the struggle to raise wages in the sector with addressing pay disparities between female- and male-dominated industries. 
Premier Chris Minns has so far refused to meet the pay demand, claiming there is not enough money in the budget to raise nurses’ salaries. However, Minns somehow found a few extra million down the back of the couch to raise police salaries by up to 40 percent. But don’t despair, ladies, this doesn’t mean that Minns isn’t absolutely dedicated to gender equality; for the first time ever, 50 percent of the NSW cabinet is made up of women! Slay.
If Labor was serious about increasing the standard of living for women in Australia, implementing measures to ease the housing crisis would make a huge difference. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute highlighted in a <a href="https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/what-are-real-costs-australias-housing-crisis-women">brief</a> last year that lower weekly earnings translate into single women taking longer to save for a deposit on a home, being less likely to find an affordable rental, having less superannuation to pay for housing in retirement and facing a higher increased risk of homelessness than men. 
Labor has refused to cap or freeze rents, or abolish regressive tax concessions for wealthy investors. Its centrepiece housing policy, the Housing Australia Future Fund, involves a limited spend on social housing in partnership with private investors who are guaranteed to make a profit out of renting to low-income people, instead of directly investing in new, publicly owned affordable housing. 
And finally, the Labor government has refused to stand up to, or even blandly criticise, the new Trump administration, which is decked out with misogynists who are determined to claw women’s rights back to the 1950s.
Gallagher, Albanese and Minns would have us believe that a vote for Labor is a vote for women’s equality. But don’t be fooled. Labor governments, like their Liberal counterparts, are nothing but bad news for women.

Clara da Costa-Reidel

Women are no better off under Labor

As the death toll from Hurricane Helene rises and people search through the rubble of their destroyed towns for survivors, policymakers prioritise US imperialism in the Middle East and business interests at home.
With more than 220 people already confirmed dead and hundreds reported missing, Helene is the deadliest US hurricane since Katrina laid waste to New Orleans in 2005. The Appalachian region of North Carolina was particularly hard hit by the storm, despite being historically less affected by hurricanes. Severe rainfall caused record-breaking floods, swallowing up entire towns, cutting off power and water, and destroying access roads.
In the small North Carolina town of Marshall, reporter Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs described one particularly harrowing story for the New York Times. Bruce Tipton’s home was destroyed by the flood while he was still inside. The 75-year-old managed to grab hold of a tree and call out for help. He clung on for six hours, waiting for a rescue team to arrive, while his family and friends watched helplessly from the riverbank. But there was only one volunteer rescue team for the entire county. When the team finally arrived, they told his family that a rescue was impossible because it was too dangerous without a motorboat—they had only rafts. Eventually, he succumbed to the floodwater. They still haven’t found his body.
Tipton’s fate is just one of hundreds of similar stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. But these tragedies were not the result only of a freak weather event beyond anyone’s control. They were exacerbated by the priorities of a sick system.
Climate scientists have been warning that climate change is increasing the severity of hurricanes in the US. Climate Central released a report in May that said the Appalachian region is carrying an outsized burden for current and future flooding. Yet the North Carolina state legislature has spent the last decade reversing climate adaptation measures and slashing environmental regulations in the interests of developers and the fossil fuel sector.
In 2023, Republican lawmakers overturned building codes requiring inspections for inland houses to certify that they are built to withstand hurricane-force winds. The change was backed by the North Carolina Home Builders Association, a developers’ group. They argued it was unnecessary outside of coastal areas, despite predictions of inland communities facing greater risk of damaging hurricanes as climate change intensifies. The same group also backed legislation to open the state’s wetlands to development. Wetlands are like sponges for rainwater and are a crucial part of flood mitigation. Instead, they were filled in so developers could build flimsy houses, destroying the very asset that could defend against the devastating floods that swept away Tipton’s trailer in minutes. 
In a logical society, these actions would be considered egregiously reckless. However, under capitalism, reducing costly environmental regulations is better for business than ensuring that houses are safe to live in.
Not only did the state legislature inhibit storm-proofing of communities, but lawmakers also went out of their way to protect fossil fuel production and usage. A report by the Environmental Integrity Project found that the state reduced funding to the Department of Environmental Quality by 35 percent in the decade from 2008, one of the biggest cuts to a state environment agency in the country at the time. Power companies like Duke Energy were given sweetheart deals so they would not have to properly remediate areas impacted by toxic wastewater from their power plants (incidentally, the governor at the time, Pat McCrory, was a former executive at Duke Energy).
Comedian Stephen Colbert joked that North Carolina was the state that “outlawed climate change”. But jokes aside, these laws propped up the profits of developers and fossil fuel companies, with full knowledge of the risk they posed to communities. And people have likely died because of it.
The similarities to how Hurricane Katrina was handled in 2005 are striking. In the wake of Katrina, former President George W. Bush’s administration expanded funding for the United States’ war in Iraq instead of adequately supporting communities impacted by the storm.
But refusing to mitigate the climate crisis and protect communities against increasingly extreme weather events is not the purview only of Republicans. Today, a Democratic administration is prioritising US imperialist interests in the Middle East over protecting its citizens from catastrophic climate change. At the same time as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced a funding shortfall of US$9 billion urgently needed to deal with the fallout of Helene, the Biden administration gave a further US$8.7 billion in aid to Israel to continue its genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon.
At the drop of a hat, the US government can send aircraft carriers with thousands of personnel and advanced equipment to the Middle East. But Bruce Tipton had to cling for his life to a tree for six hours because there was only one under-resourced volunteer rescue team available for the entire county.
Tragically, another hurricane has now made landfall in Florida. It could potentially be even more destructive than Helene. But FEMA is suffering from an acute staffing shortage, meaning more people could be stranded without rescue, just like Tipton. The agency has indicated that only 9 percent of its staff are available for deployment to Florida as it is battling numerous other environmental disasters. The money to prevent further loss of life is there, but it’s being spent on blowing up Palestinian children.
This is what our rulers think of us. From Gaza to North Carolina, ordinary people dying in preventable disasters are just the price of doing business under capitalism.

Hurricane Helene exposes the deadly priorities of US capitalism

Three large academic publishers—Elsevier, Wiley and American Chemical Society—brought a case against the pirate website Sci-Hub and its founder, 34-year-old computer scientist Alexandra Elbakyan, in 2020. They argued that the website, which hacks academic journals so users can access thousands of scientific articles for free, infringed on their copyright and should be blocked. 
This wasn’t the first time that Elbakyan and Sci-Hub faced legal challenges. In 2017, a New York court awarded Elsevier, the world’s largest academic publisher, US$15 million in damages and a permanent injunction for copyright infringement. Elbakyan, who lives in Russia, never paid the fine, and Sci-Hub continues to operate under various domain names and IP addresses after being blocked by many countries.
Central to the case is the idea that academic publishers have the right to own knowledge and distribute it at a price—a very high one at that. Academic publishing is one of the most lucrative businesses in the world; global revenues exceeded US$24 billion in 2017, somewhere between that of the film and music industries, according to the Guardian. Elsevier’s scientific publishing arm reported a profit margin of nearly 40 percent in 2010, greater than Amazon, Google and Apple in the same year.
Pirate sites like Sci-Hub are a direct threat to the profits of these companies. In response to accusations of theft and that Sci-Hub threatens the integrity of scientific research, Elbakyan hit back on Twitter, saying: “Open communication is a fundamental property of science, and it makes scientific progress possible. Paywalled access prevents this. That is a threat, and not Sci-Hub”.
Many of us who studied science at university will agree with Elbakyan’s sentiment. We were led to believe that academia is about the altruistic pursuit of knowledge and solving society’s problems. Most people would probably agree that publicly funded scientific research should be freely available to all. 
But in reality, scientific knowledge is no exception to the profit-driven motives of capitalism, in which goods and services are commodified and sold in order to increase the wealth of a select few. 
Academic publishing is a privatised sector in which a tiny number of large corporations control the distribution of knowledge for profit. A 2015 study led by Professor Vincent Larivière and published in the open-access journal PLOS One, found that just five companies controlled over 50 percent of the market. Elsevier owns 3,000 journals, which amounts to 18 percent of the world’s research.
Despite controlling access to most scientific research, publishing companies don’t commission or pay for any of it; taxpayers do. Most research is funded through government grants at publicly funded institutions. The Parliament of Australia 2022-23 Budget Review reported that in 2021-22, the Australian government invested A$11.8 billion in research and development. About 17 percent (approximately A$2 billion) of this went to research block grants for universities, and 8 percent went to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Researchers are paid by these grants to conduct scientific studies and produce papers, with their results for publication in academic journals. Peer review, the process by which other researchers in the field evaluate the quality of study before the paper is finally accepted for publication, is done for free by the academic community. 
Publishers then charge researchers a processing fee to publish papers in their journals. Most of these journals are subscriber only—it costs US$30 to access a single paper from Science journal and a subscription to one of Elsevier’s journals can cost thousands of dollars. 
Academic publishing is basically a huge rort in which a handful of corporations preside over a parasitic model in which publicly funded researchers do all the work, write it up and judge its merits, then pay to publish and access each other’s results. So, who is the real thief: Elbakyan or the publishers?
Proponents of capitalism argue that its competitive dynamic drives innovation. But this for-profit model of academic publishing does the opposite, creating significant financial barriers to accessing knowledge, thereby stifling scientific progress. In an opinion piece for the Bookseller, a British magazine about the publishing industry, researcher Raphael Tsavkko Garcia recalled: “I wrote the article, but I simply could not access it, nor [could] anyone from my university that might be interested in a similar topic. I spoke to a few colleagues who also could not access it, but rather had to pay large sums of money to read it and cite it—which is the academic’s main goal. So, I managed to publish, but I would ultimately perish because no one in my area seemed to be able to read it”.
The idea that research should be for scientific advancement and not for profit has pushed the academic community to request more open-access journals, in which published papers are available for free. However, publishers have worked their way around this by including open-access journals alongside their traditional subscriber ones while increasing the publishing fee. For instance, the fees for Lancet Neurology (Elsevier) and Nature Neuroscience (Springer Nature) are US$6,300 and US$11,690, respectively. 
While open access makes scientific studies freely available to the public, it continues to entrench inequality in research because the exorbitant publishing costs exclude researchers from countries or institutions that aren’t well funded. This is not a challenge to the for-profit model of academic publishing; it is simply transferring the cost of research publications from the front to the back, and the public still foot the bill.
This set-up has a perverse effect on the quality of scientific research. The concentration of academic publishing means that these large companies get an outsized say over the kind of science that is published. Negative results and reproductions of previous studies are important contributions to science, but a survey on academic integrity by Daniele Fanelli from the University of Edinburgh in 2009 found that these kinds of studies are often rejected in favour of publishing only positive or novel results, which are more likely to attract purchasing fees. 
The market model of higher education has exacerbated the problem. Far from existing purely for the pursuit of knowledge, universities are run like businesses and compete with one another to get a greater share of the market for students, grants and contracts with industry. University rankings are largely calculated based on quantitative metrics, so similar expectations are pushed on to staff. For example, academics are frequently required to publish a set number of papers in high-impact journals as a condition of employment or career progression. This encourages unscrupulous practices such as fabricating data and manipulating results to get a publishable outcome. The Fanelli survey found that 14 percent of the participating academics knew a scientist who had fabricated entire datasets, and 72 percent knew one who had indulged in other questionable practices. 
The pay-to-publish model exacerbates this by incentivising journals to cut corners on quality control to increase the publication rate and therefore make more profits. American science journalist John Bohannon tested this system in 2013 by submitting a nonsensical scientific paper to more than 300 journals; 157 of them quickly accepted it with limited to no peer review. 
The stranglehold academic publishers have over the production and distribution of knowledge stifles innovation and threatens the integrity of scientific research. It represents the opposite of scientific progress.

Academic publishing and the commodification of knowledge

The Chilean population has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/05/chile-votes-overwhelmingly-to-reject-new-progressive-constitution">voted overwhelmingly to reject</a> a proposal for a new constitution to replace the current document, written under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. The shockingly strong “reject” vote of 62 percent comes just two years after an explosion of street protests and strikes forced conservative President Sebastian Piñera to promise the drafting of a new constitution. In a plebiscite held in November 2019, 80 percent of the population voted for a popularly-elected convention to do the re-drafting, which is a long-held demand of the Chilean left. 
How could such a massive turnaround in sentiment occur in such a short period of time?
The 2019 rebellion shook the Chilean political establishment to its core. When the government attempted to raise metro fare prices by 30 pesos, school students began rioting, opening subway stations and triggering a wave of mass street demonstrations that lasted months. While the fare hike sparked the protests, demands addressing a range of social and economic grievances quickly developed, from free education to overhauling the privatised pension system and nationalising key sectors of the economy such as mining. The movement reached its high point on 13 November with a successful general strike that paralysed much of the country. The demands of the rebellion were championed by the slogan “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years!”—a clear expression of anger at the economic legacy of the dictatorship. 
The rebellion demonstrated the potential for workers to challenge the power of the capitalist class. Despite resorting to violent repression in response to the initial protests, calling the military into the streets for the first time since the dictatorship, Piñera was forced to make concessions to the millions of people participating in street demonstrations and strikes around the country. Early on, he retracted the metro fare hike, but this only gave people greater confidence to fight for more, as calls for Piñera’s resignation began to grow. 
In an attempt to find a way out of the crisis, Piñera looked to the social democratic parties to support a “Pact for Peace and a New Constitution”, in exchange for an end to the street demonstrations and strikes. Under the Pact, the country would hold a series of votes on whether to draft a new constitution, on the drafting process, on a constitutional convention and, finally, on whether to approve or reject the proposed new text. 
The goal of the pact was to channel the popular movement into a safe, electoral pathway that would demobilise the millions of protesters demanding an end to Chilean neoliberalism. The centre and centre-left parties such as the Socialist Party and the Christian Democrats, which never challenged neoliberal economic orthodoxy during their many years in government, as well the newly formed leftist coalition Broad Front, agreed to the pact in secret, behind the backs of protesters. In doing so, they saved a despised, right-wing government from being toppled and bought time for the Chilean ruling class to stabilise the country.
The demand for a new constitution is a historic demand of the Chilean people, many of whom view the constitution written under the dictatorship, which privatised much of the economy, as illegitimate. However, it was not the key demand that brought millions of people out into the streets. Rather, it was a demand that developed with the movement. Most demands revolved around economic and social grievances, yet the reformist forces promoted rewriting the constitution as the main mechanism through which to address these grievances. They deprioritised mass mobilisations and strike action and encouraged the population to instead focus on voting representatives into the constitutional convention and, later, into government.
With resistance in the streets and workplaces fading, the political right was able to regroup and pressure the reformists to concede on key issues during the process. In the presidential elections last year, ultraconservative businessman José Antonio Kast came close to winning after getting the highest percentage of the vote in the first round. In response, self-proclaimed socialist and former student leader Gabriel Boric moderated his campaign, highlighting his commitment to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-president-boric-wait-new-constitution-before-discussing-tpp-2022-03-14/">fiscal responsibility</a> and <a href="https://www.pauta.cl/politica/jose-antonio-kast-gabriel-boric-debate-archi-seguridad-orden-publico">law and order</a> to appease the conservative forces against him. While <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/left-wing-reformer-defeats-far-right-candidate-chilean-presidential-election">he won the presidency</a> in the second round, forming government as leader of the Broad Front in coalition with the Communist and Socialist parties, his campaign shifted the political terrain to the right.
In government, at every step of the constitutional process Boric and the reformist leaders have capitulated to the right and the capitalist class. The Communist Party, for example, stated that it would not take its seats in the convention until all political prisoners were freed—but on the first day backflipped and took its seats. Further, on a number of crucial votes in the convention, the Broad Front <a href="https://www.larazon.cl/2022/06/01/la-fallida-nacionalizacion-del-cobre-en-chile-las-trasnacionales-se-impusieron/">voted against</a> demands that went directly to the heart of the 2019 movement, such as the vote on nationalising extractive industries.
In the lead up to the plebiscite, the right rallied to reject the new constitution, running a scare campaign in tabloids and on social media claiming that the new constitution, and the Boric administration, would turn the country into “<a href="https://www.elciudadano.com/chile/la-derecha-miente-y-vota-rechazo-para-continuar-saqueando-a-chile-cronica-de-su-descaro/08/03/">Chilezuela</a>” and result in economic chaos. Key business associations vocally <a href="https://www.latercera.com/pulso/noticia/grandes-empresarios-ven-con-mejores-ojos-que-se-rechace-la-propuesta-de-nueva-constitucion/WVBKTD7DZVBPRJ776EV2KEHSFY/">supported</a> the “reject” campaign. In response, Boric and his government embraced the slogan “approve to reform”. The slogan was a clear attempt to appeal to centrist voters and appease the right by showing that the government itself was not committed to the new text. Such leadership has helped to create a sense of disillusionment among broad sections of the population that only recently were building barricades in the streets and demanding the overthrow of the government. 
Since forming government at the start of this year, Boric has staked his presidency on steering the draft text through the convention and having it approved by a popular vote. The government was also strongly supported by the union bureaucracy, led by the United Workers’ Central of Chile (CUT). The CUT was instrumental in demobilising the protests at the height of the rebellion, and has since stood idly by while living standards have fallen. Its strategy has been based entirely on supporting the constituent process and dampening any left-wing opposition to it. The Communist Party, which dominates the CUT leadership, has played its typical role of providing left cover to the government, in which it holds several key portfolios. This has increasingly alienated the population, whose living standards have declined further during the pandemic and are facing consumer price increases of more than 11 percent by the end of the year. 
This disconnect between the ambitions of the reformist parliamentary leaders and the working class has contributed to widespread disillusionment as Chileans have failed to see any meaningful improvements to their lives since the mass mobilisations ended and the constitutional convention began. This has been compounded by the fact that none of the key demands of the 2019 movement are addressed in the proposal. Propositions to nationalise copper mines and free political prisoners were expressly <a href="http://anticapitalistas.cl/2022/07/05/termino-la-convencion-constitucional-entre-sus-limites-y-perspectivas/">voted down</a> by the convention. Neoliberalism was upheld in the text (“freedom to choose” <a href="https://www.clacso.org/en/chile-nueva-constitucion-y-la-posibilidad-de-refundar-el-sistema-de-salud/">justifying</a> the continued market provision of social services such as healthcare), as was the independent power of the central bank. 
By focusing on constitutional answers to the grievances expressed by the 2019 movement—by channelling mass anger and discontent into safe, electoral pathways—the reformists dismantled the only force that could seriously challenge Chilean neoliberalism and make headway on some of the demands raised by the movement. 
This is despite some genuinely progressive reforms being in the proposed text. For example, the draft constitution stated in the first clause that Chile is a social democratic country and, in subsequent clauses, codified basic human rights such as the right to water and abortion. Further, it offered recognition of and protection for indigenous languages and cultures, and environmental protections.
What should have been a serious blow to the legacy of the dictatorship and a win for the left has instead become a victory for the right. The success of the “reject” campaign will embolden conservative forces to further attack working-class living standards and to entrench neoliberal policy in Chile. 
The outcome is an indictment on the reformist strategy of relying on elections and institutional pathways to make change. Some forces have already been quick to blame the Chilean people for the defeat, but the left needs to reckon with the failure of the reformist strategy to deal with the crises of neoliberalism. The key task now is to rebuild anti-capitalist politics that reject electoralism and instead look to collective power in the streets and in workplaces to re-ignite the rebellion of 2019.

Tom Sullivan

Reformist strategy leads to defeat of Chile’s new constitution

“We want more than thanks!” was the rallying cry of thousands of striking teachers who formed a sea of red outside the New South Wales parliament on 7 December. Hailing from across the state, their message to the premier and the education minister was that they had had enough. 
The government is offering a 2.5 percent pay increase, which barely keeps up with inflation. The union is demanding up to 7.5 percent to reflect the decline in teachers’ salaries relative to other skilled professions. 
Speakers at the rally talked about the endless paperwork, the weekends and evenings spent catching up on administration, and time taken out of teaching time to meet bureaucratic requirements. Teachers are demanding more planning time so they can deliver the quality education they believe students deserve.
Workloads are intensified by the serious teacher shortage in New South Wales. According to the education department’s <a href="https://news.nswtf.org.au/blog/media-release/2021/12/strike-proceed-tomorrow-teacher-shortages-worsen-nsw">own figures</a>, there are 3,000 unfilled full-time positions in the state’s schools. Teachers are having to pick up the slack to keep the schools running. As a result of unmanageable workloads, the union says two-thirds of teachers are considering leaving the profession. Added to that is the toll that two years of online learning and supporting students through the pandemic has taken on educators. 
While chatting with two teachers on the bus heading to the strike rally, I mentioned that I was studying to become a teacher. “Don’t do it!” was their emphatic response. “I’ve been teaching for 20 years”, one said, “and the workloads have never been this bad”. 
Their union t-shirts were emblazoned with the slogan “more than thanks” on the front. “Even a little thanks would be nice!” the younger teacher remarked. Instead, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell slammed the striking teachers, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/teachers-federation-is-an-obstructionist-protection-racket-says-mitchell-20211206-p59f9o.html">accusing</a> the union of being a “protectionist racket” and “hellbent on hanging students out to dry for political purposes”. 
Despite Mitchell’s <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-07/train-strikes-to-cause-chaos-in-sydney/100678550">claim</a> that the strike was “pitting teachers, families and students against each other”, there is broad support for the teachers’ demands. A poll by the Sydney Morning Herald showed 83 percent of respondents supported the demand for a pay rise, reflecting the general sense in the community that teachers are not recognised for the crucial and difficult work they do.
The government’s 2.5 percent cap on public sector wage rises has come under fire from other unions this year with the Rail, Tram and Bus union taking industrial action over pay as well. Combined with the teachers’ strike, these high-profile sectors have the potential to defeat the policy, paving the way for real wage rises in the public sector. But this cannot be left to union officials, even those with the best negotiating strategies. Many teachers recognise that what is needed to win is concerted and ongoing strike action by public servants to put real pressure on the government.
“Teachers got a glimpse of the kind of pressure they could bring to bear last week when 400 schools across the state were shut down for the day”, a delegate from a school in Sydney’s west told Red Flag. “For many teachers, this was their first strike and it really gave them a sense of the kind of power we have when we take action collectively.”
The union has not ruled out more industrial action. “If we want to win our demands”, the western Sydney teacher said, “we’ll need to continue to go on strike to show the government we are serious and if they want a functioning education system, where students receive quality education and teachers don’t leave the sector in droves, they are going to have to give us what we are asking for”.
This sentiment echoes that of the older teacher from the bus. “Everything we have today is because the unions fought for it”, she said. “We used to have rolling strikes where we’d shut down the schools for days. We’ll need more of those if we are going to get what we want this time.”

Teachers strike in NSW

“So what? I’m sorry, what do you want me to do about it?” Such was the attitude of far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro when journalists asked him on 28 April to comment on the thousands of deaths around the country from COVID-19.
Since then, the death toll has surpassed 22,000, according to <a href="https://covid.saude.gov.br/">official figures</a>, although there is evidence that official figures are not representative of the true impact of the virus, because Brazil has one of the lowest testing rates in the world. For instance, <a href="https://noticias.ufsc.br/2020/05/artigo-aponta-subnotificacao-de-casos-de-covid-19-em-santa-catarina/?fbclid=IwAR1EWDEw0hwquj-L9rCCHRjJP9XAHP5y0tUwBetv8kmIj_8xOSdFJJlM-b0">a joint study</a> by the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Univille University and the University of Waterloo (Canada), estimates that the number of cases in the state of Santa Catarina could be four times higher than the government says. 
The effects of the coronavirus outbreak are exacerbating <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/brazil/overview">economic problems</a> that were evident well before the pandemic. Brazil suffered a significant economic contraction in 2015-16 due to falling commodity prices. Economic growth has been slow ever since. The value of the real, the national currency, is at an all-time low after a bigger than expected central bank rate cut to stave off what could be the worst annual economic contraction in half a century, with gross domestic product expected to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/brazil-economy-forecast/bank-of-america-cuts-brazil-gdp-forecast-to-7-7-from-3-5-idUSS0N2CM02W">shrink</a> by a further 7.7 percent this year. Workers have borne the brunt of the economic downturn, 1.2 million <a href="https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2020/04/desemprego-vai-a-122-com-avanco-do-novo-coronavirus.shtml">losing their jobs</a> in the first quarter of 2020, pushing the unemployment rate to more than 12 percent.
The economic and health crises have precipitated a political crisis, sections of the establishment splitting on how best to save Brazilian capitalism and ward off social unrest. On the one hand, Bolsonaro wants to downplay the severity of the pandemic and is willing to let the virus run rampant through the population to avoid the economic costs of a lockdown. In March, he dismissed the virus as “just a little cold”, a line he continues to stand by despite the incredible death toll.
In contrast to Bolsonaro’s laissez-faire attitude, many state governors have restricted the activity of businesses and implemented lockdowns with the support of the Supreme Court. Yet the lockdowns are not based on humanitarian considerations. They have been implemented in the interests of Brazilian capitalism. The working class and the poor have been given little to no support from the state governors. Health workers are suffering in appalling working conditions. CNN <a href="https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/saude/2020/05/08/brasil-ultrapassa-eua-em-mortes-de-profissionais-de-enfermagem-por-covid-19">reported</a> on 8 May that Brazil has a higher death rate of nurses than the US. Many are <a href="https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/04/29/profissionais-de-saude-do-rj-reclamam-de-trabalhar-com-sintomas-da-covid-19-sem-teste.ghtml">under pressure to keep working</a> despite presenting with symptoms. State hospitals have only enough kits to test patients who have serious symptoms of the disease. In the state of Rio de Janeiro, health workers have been <a href="https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/04/29/profissionais-de-saude-do-rj-reclamam-de-trabalhar-com-sintomas-da-covid-19-sem-teste.ghtml">forced to pay </a>to be tested at private clinics. 
Simply implementing lockdowns is insufficient when millions do not have access to basic shelter. Brazil is riddled with overcrowded and poor housing. More than 31 million people <a href="http://www.esquerdadiario.com.br/A-saida-e-a-unidade-da-classe-trabalhadora-que-como-mostrou-a-pandemia-e-quem-move-o-mundo">do not have access</a> to clean water, and almost 6 million do not have bathrooms in their homes.
The resignation of justice minister Sergio Moro shows just how deep is the split in the ruling class. He was the face of the institutional coup against the Workers’ Party (PT) in 2016 and threw his support behind Bolsonaro’s election campaign in 2018. Moro is now using language about corruption similar to that which he used to crush the PT, to justify joining with the rest of the establishment in opposing Bolsonaro. 
Bolsonaro was never the ideal representative for the ruling class. The impeachment of PT president Dilma Rousseff centred on corruption charges. But the main conservative parties were up to their necks in bribery and fraud. The establishment needed a “clean” candidate to be their public face in the 2018 presidential elections. The conservative capitalist class mobilised behind Bolsonaro, a previously insignificant politician from a small hard-right party, presenting him as an alternative to mainstream politics, untainted by corruption. This won him a significant voter base. 
However, the alliance was always fragile because the traditional establishment parties were simply using him to regain control of government. Parliamentary support for Bolsonaro has since disintegrated. The split has caused a political crisis in the ruling class that is being felt in society more broadly.
Alarmingly, it has opened a space for the far right, already emboldened by Bolsonaro’s election, to continue to grow. The president is stoking this fire by campaigning for the lockdowns to be lifted. In recent weeks, he has mobilised large numbers for demonstrations in various cities, disregarding health advice and social distancing measures. Images circulated of the president shaking hands and taking photos at a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/brazil-bolsonaro-joins-protest-coronavirus-curbs-200420042616860.html">demonstration</a> in the capital calling for the closure of the Supreme Court and Congress. 
Participants held placards demanding “military intervention with Bolsonaro” and the reinstitution of a dictatorship-era decree imposed by military rulers in 1968 to suffocate their political opponents. Known as AI-5, the decree allowed many thousands to be persecuted, tortured and killed. While he commands only a minority in the Congress, Bolsonaro has the backing of the military, which formed an important base for him during the 2018 election. If the far right grows, backed by the armed forces, there is a serious threat of a more authoritarian and militarised government under Bolsonaro.
Meanwhile, the reformist left has failed to oppose the ruling class and now it plays the electoral game. The <a href="https://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/eleicoes/partidos-articulam-frente-progressista-para-disputar-eleicoes-sem-o-pt/">PT </a>and the left-wing <a href="https://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/eleicoes/divisao-na-esquerda-faz-freixo-desistir-de-disputar-prefeitura-do-rj/">Socialism and Liberty Party</a> have been seeking an alliance with the Congress and the governors, the same institutions that were instrumental in the impeachment of Rousseff and the rise of the far right. Nothing progressive can come from this. The reformist left is more concerned with maintaining parliamentary alliances, which they believe will serve them in the upcoming local government elections and the 2022 presidential race, than with mobilising the working class to fight Bolsonaro and the right.
The crisis also offers opportunities for the far left. The opportunities present themselves in the glimmers of resistance from workers and students starting to spring up around the country. Health workers have been <a href="https://twitter.com/ZellFlorizel/status/1250761051936825344?s=20">protesting</a> and threatening to go on strike due to a lack of personal protective equipment. Medical residents hired to fight COVID-19 <a href="https://congressoemfoco.uol.com.br/saude/residentes-em-greve-apos-dois-meses-sem-receber-do-ministerio-da-saude/">started a strike</a> because they haven’t received their salaries in the past couple of months, and dozens have participated in a protest outside the Ministry of Health building in Brasilia. Health workers from the biggest public hospital in Amazonas, one of the biggest COVID hotspots, <a href="https://epoca.globo.com/brasil/profissionais-do-maior-hospital-publico-do-amazonas-ameacam-greve-24394479">threaten to go on strike</a> due to poor working conditions, including that around 5,000 of them have been receiving late payments or no payment at all for eight months. Students have been mobilising to put pressure on the government to postpone the high school national exam, and in May they organised an <a href="https://www.redebrasilatual.com.br/educacao/2020/05/adiaenem-protesto-virtual-incomoda-porque-eles-governam-pelas-redes-diz-presidente-da-une/">online protest</a>.
A political crisis has engulfed the Brazilian ruling elite as they grapple with the pandemic and associated economic fallout. The rise of the far right and Bolsonaro’s military agenda could have devastating consequences for the mass of working people still reeling from the crushing defeat of the PT in recent years. To take on this growing threat, the socialist left will need to intervene in struggles arising in workplaces and schools to help build a movement capable of confronting it. Wherever there is resistance, no matter how small, it presents an opportunity for the left to grow independently of the reformist parliamentary forces.

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