The Communist Party 19

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.

We are in the moment of a great pandemic crisis, that pandemic being caused by viruses. There are two viruses causing a pandemic at this time. One you may know as COVID-19, the Coronavirus. The other virus isn’t as talked about as much, that virus is capitalism.

While white collar workers are told they can work from home, blue collar workers are forced to continue working and keep production going. Even in Crisis the Capitalist machine would rather suck the life out of its seemingly endless supply of labor, in the chance that profit can still be pumped out of the workforce. Faceless and humanless, the lack of compassion for the ill, the bourgeois will work its labor to the bone, risking their life. However, for most, the risk of losing their hourly wage is still too great in order to sacrifice skipping going to work. The workers must still sacrifice their life in the hopes that they will still be paid.

As a response the bourgeois government has attempted to ease the burden of the pandemic. First, by the Democratic party passing a sick leave bill for only 20 percent of the workforce. To now Universal Basic Income being implemented, a payment of 1,000 dollars to every person. However, UBI is just another way in which the Capitalist system attempts to warp itself and adapt to yet again another crisis. Low wages, meaning that workers, have less and less purchasing power, create sky rocketing profits for the owners, yet the owners can never fully purchase everything, exacerbating the crisis of overproduction. This has led to several crises for the bourgeois government to adopt minimal solutions. One introducing credit to be used as a purchasing power, to make up for the low wages, engulfing the victims of Capitalism to slowly trap themselves in a seemingly never ending build up of debt.

Since wages were stagnate, the major contradiction began to form in corporate debt. Ultra low interest rates have caused a mass amount of loans to be taken out for companies to take those loans and inflate their own stock prices. This as well has allowed for corporations to centralize capital into fewer hands, with acquisition and mergers used with these loans. At the end of 2019 about half of the world economy is made up of corporate debt.

As companies panic over not being able to pay this debt back due to having their profits suffered because of this pandemic, a price war for oil between Saudi Arabia and Russia has also triggered many negative effects. As OPEC countries and Russia gathered to plan production cuts due to coronavirus. Russia decided to break a three year pact that manages global oil supply, refusing to sign on to Saudi Arabia’s cuts. This allowed for more production of oil and slowly this overproduction began shooting the price of oil down. As the price of oil drops, stocks begin to crash hard.

As of 3-20-2020, the stock market has lost 35% of its value in the past 3 weeks. In comparison the Great Depression was triggered by a 24.8% drop. The workers will feel all of the burden of this crash. Much as they did during the Great Depression, and Great Recession. The government will bail out the companies that fail, that recklessly inflated their own stocks with fictitious capital. Workers will get laid off, retirement savings will be erased, and average working people who spent their whole lives just trying to get by, will lose everything. Those who get sick will not be able to afford the private health insurance bills, and won’t be able to see a doctor, causing the coronavirus to keep spreading and spreading.

Yet, in this deep dark time of grave uncertainty, the working class must not devolve itself into petty individualism, instead it must unite itself and come together in solidarity. Those who are still able to work will begin to see their conditions worsen, as the corporate bourgeois government begins to batten down the hatches for the looming uncertain future. Workers must organize and fight back, and they must stand together, beyond borders, with the working class of all countries. As the coronavirus itself isn’t limited by borders, neither should the working class. Workers must call for medical leave, and call for a pause to work during this pandemic. Through this very united class front, the international working class can change society, and prioritize the human needs in this moment of crisis and any looming future crisis. The class union, in Coordination with the International Communist Party, can smash the demands of the market, for continuing to force workers to labor their lives away during a pandemic, just for a small chance of below liveable scraps, without any compassion for the families or lives that are torn apart and destroyed, all in the name of the never ending, continuous and pathological pursuit of profit.

Where the ruling class only concern in this moment is their own relief to the arrogance and stupidity of their reckless spur of the moment lining of their own pockets, pinn headed imperialism, and concern only for profit, the working class must use the cure, Communism, for this virus and eradicate the long term sickness of Capitalism.

Much has been written in the course of the COVID-19 crisis about the necessity of public health infrastructure. In the United States, the pandemic has amplified socialdemocratic calls for a public healthcare system.

Medical research and pharmaceutical development are often left out of these demands. The present situation demonstrates that state health insurance is not enough to protect human health. All aspects of medicine – education, research, industry, infrastructure, and clinical practice – must be centralized under the proletariat’s control.

The example of Remdesivir, an antiviral drug developed by Gilead Sciences, illustrates the issues inherent in medical development for profit. Gilead, the thirteenth-largest pharmaceutical company in the world, has been reluctant to participate in drug trials in China for fear of losing control of its intellectual property. A Chinese research laboratory, for its part, has applied for a patent on the use of Remdesivir to treat COVID-19. As the number of infections and deaths grows by the day, international capitalism remains concerned with its property regime.

The search for a vaccine further demonstrates the failing of bourgeois medicine. At present there are at least 20 separate companies working on vaccine development. Each has its own profit motives, its own methods, and its own intellectual property concerns. The countries in which they operate have their own national interests to protect. Several academic institutions are also running their own searches.

This epitomizes the anarchy of production. If ever there has been a time for the centralization of the medical industry, it is in response to the current pandemic.

The international proletariat should have exclusive and unified control over all aspects of medicine. Medical discoveries are the common possession of all of humanity, thus there must be a common project to put them into practical use.

The workers conducted a sit-down strike at the Mercedes-Benz assembly line in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain being required to work despite the COVID-19 outbreak. After talks with management over factory conditions and precautions against the spread of COVID-19 broke down, employees stopped working and staged a sit-in at the end of the assembly line, refusing to allow the production process to continue.

The factory’s works council, which represents employees, alleged that Mercedes management failed to comply with on-the-job safety requirements such as ensuring that workers have masks, adequate gloves, and other supplies.