To defend Puerto Rico’s right to peace is to defend Venezuela’s right to exist, argues MICHELLE ELLNER
WRITING in 1918, Lenin reflected on the “rottenness, mendacity and hypocrisy of capitalism.”
In the same text he wrote also of bourgeois democracy being “a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited” — The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky.
While of course Lenin knew nothing of Covid-19, the wisdom of both observations has been brutally exposed by the pandemic, as badly exploited workers have been failed by the state, with their trade unions increasingly both marginalised and vilified.
The Bill addresses some exploitation but leaves trade unions heavily regulated, most workers without collective bargaining coverage, and fails to tackle the balance of power that enables constant mutation of bad practice, write KEITH EWING and LORD JOHN HENDY KC



