The pandemic is not above the classes

The different forms of life constitute a totality in the constant and infinite twists and turns of their evolution. The human species coexists with many other forms of life, some of them within the human body itself, sometimes useful, sometimes harmful. Humanity has learned how to counter the aggression of the larger animal species, but remains vulnerable to the smaller ones, including many insects, some single-celled organisms and viruses.

It would certainly be useful to write a history of the great epidemics which, over the centuries, have had significant effects on the development of humanity, from those that marked the end of the Middle Ages in Europe, to the rubella and smallpox that exterminated the Native American populations, to the so-called “Spanish flu”, which was brought on by the First World War and ended up doubling its victims.

Let’s ask ourselves: is humankind better prepared to respond to the threat of epidemics than in the past? The answer is without doubt, “yes” with regard to the many scourges that, until a few decades ago, were prodigious dispensers of bereavement and disability, often inflicted on the young, bringing diseases such as trachoma, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis: the first two caused by a bacterium, the third by a virus. These are epidemics whose spread persists only in the poorest regions of the planet, among the lower social classes and where healthcare is less available.

Life expectancy is also increasing, but it sinks sharply in the chasm opened up by economic crises or caused by political disarray, as happened, for example, to a great extent during the breakup of the Russian Union from 1989 onwards.

Because what does not work to preserve the health of the species is capitalism, which creates an incurable conflict between the laws of reproduction of capital, and those of the reproduction and conservation of living species – and first and foremost, the human species.

It is no coincidence that the current epidemic originated in China, a country that in recent decades has seen extraordinarily rapid growth, which has taken it to the forefront of modern capitalist economic development.

It is clear that the dilemma we confront today is as follows: Should we defend humanity from this invisible aggression, which could cause (we do not know yet) the extermination of the species; or, should we defend the continuous functioning of the relations of production based on waged labour and the circulation of commodities? Should we defend the human species or, should we defend its historical-productive expression in the capitalist era, which goes by the name of “the nation”?

The dilemma is there for all to see, all around us: in the tense procrastination, “to close or not to close?” much time is lost in the effort to prevent infection. In Japan, for example, the great threat and the great concern for the bourgeois class is the loss of big business presented by the Olympics.

Faced with a maturity of knowledge and of human labour that tends to make the whole planet a single intelligent and collaborative machine, each bourgeoisie, perched in its own State and surrounded by its own “scientists”, delays sounding the alarm for as long as possible, closing the borders to those who want to enter, but not to those who want to leave. And they set quotas for tests with nasal swabs to reduce the number of infected! Meanwhile, they also take advantage of the disease to exploit any kind of fraud and speculation.

In the current senile crisis of world capital, the profit system is hovering on the edge of a recession and overproduction. But let’s not allow a pandemic to keep workers safely away from the factories and construction sites! let’s not block the containers stacked up on the docks, 95% of them full of goods that are of no use to us! Let’s not keep planes on the tarmac, as that could do serious damage to “tourism”, the cure for the boredom of the petty bourgeoisie.

Closing schools and cinemas is cheap. But closing the factories until the danger has passed? Unthinkable! Madness! Heresy! Indeed, even trade unions like Unite in the UK call for “financial assistance” to industries such as aviation to “deal with the calamitous collapse in bookings”. Because workers must go to work, no substantive rules on hygiene must be allowed to disrupt industry or the workers’ means of getting to work. We are better off dead!

The mere setting up of a health prophylaxis, with the temporary modification of the rhythms and means of production, knowledge and consumption, implemented according to an international plan, a necessary break in the cycle of collective human life on the planet, is incompatible with the rhythms and the cycle of capital, for which production and consumption must not, and can never stop.

The working class must not accept this, it must enforce the payment of wages to all workers dismissed from work because of the virus, not least temporary workers and workers in the “gig economy” whose lives are already precarious enough as it is. The pandemic is not above social classes and the proletariat must not entrust its management to the predatory class of the bosses and their State.