CHICAGO, USA, April 7 – Solidarity Caravan circles Cook County Jail, site of the largest outbreak of Covid-19 in the US so far, calling for the mass release of detainees.
“All of us or none!” – Communism Means “People Not Profits”
April 6—The world has changed already. Even before the coronavirus struggle has reached its height, our views have shifted dramatically. And they will shift even more in the days and weeks to come.
Today, like yesterday and the days before, millions of health care workers from doctors to janitors went to work “on the front lines” in an attempt first to hold back and eventually to defeat the deadly virus.
Their commitment is applauded by millions more with pots and pans or handclapping demonstrations from their places of shelter.
Whatever else they are doing, these feet of healthcare workers hurrying to work are trampling over the sacred notion that the pursuit of profits is the motive force of humankind. Whether consciously or not, they are rubbishing a core idea of capitalist culture (work hard and rise above your class) and raising a core idea of communist culture (all of us or none).
They are putting people before profits. That’s a start. Their feet and hands are following their heart. Yet we have to keep going. We have to advance from the beautiful but idealistic idea of people before profits to the revolutionary and realistic one of people not profits.
For the last 30 years or more the world’s major economies have been battling to reverse a falling rate of profit. Whatever victories they won proved short lived. Worse still each strategy they adopted has deepened the crisis we face today.
In health care, for example, they cut hospital beds. 90% occupancy means more profits. They cut supplies (like ventilators) to just-in-time, making more profits. They cut staff to make more profits. And governments cut services like the CDC. Nursing homes for the elderly run on the lowest possible costs to make more profits. Big Pharma turns its back on developing vaccines because manufacturing prescription pills makes more profits
Thirty years of cuts and schemes to make more profits. Thirty years of weakening defenses against a viral threat they knew was coming as surely as an earthquake in Chile or in California.
As a result, 1.7 billion people are now living under some form of self-isolation. That’s almost ¼ of the world’s population. However, the real threat from this virus lies among the ¾ of the world’s population who is not living under self- isolation.
They live in favelas and barrios so overcrowded that self-isolation is impossible. They live in townships or refugee camps where running water is a mile away. When the virus penetrates these neighborhoods, it will be unstoppable.
These densely populated, poorly served areas are no accident. They are the result of multinational and global capitalists’ relentless search for cheaper and cheaper labor so that they can make more profits.
So as these millions of health care workers walk to their change of shift, they are protesting the world created by the makers of private profits. “Ideas,” Marx once wrote, “once seized by the masses become a material force.”
How powerful that force will be we have yet to find out. However, we have some clues. The workers know it is a long battle they have decided to fight. They have not decided alone but with family and co-workers. They are not just going to work. They are now a social force that in this dog-eat-dog capitalist world champion above all else not profits but human life!
They have already changed the boundaries of political debate. It is out of this struggle that the future leaders of our communist revolution will come!
Workers Have the Power to Destroy this Racist System
I read recently that “the virus is enhancing what is already inside of each person.” The same is true when highlighting the broken system of healthcare. The gaps in healthcare are not a result of careless health workers but rather a system full of layers and barriers.
I have always thought of the Government as the Great Wizard of Oz, but like Oz it is a make-believe land that doesn’t really exist and is not built to help anyone. When you pull the curtain, what you find is that what you believe to be greatness simply a person looking for power to help themselves.
The good news is that Dorothy finds that she held the power all along to make choices and change where she wants it. This current pandemic has allowed us to pull the curtain on the government, highlight the false sense of security, and reexamine our role in driving change.
Recently I witnessed firsthand how a group of lab workers decided to pull back the red tape and use their knowledge to drive change. They joined to innovate to provide Covid-19 Testing and disburse resources on their own.
The ability, equipment, and knowledge have always existed to provide more than what is currently being done, but the hurdles of bureaucracy have created a bottleneck to getting resources where they are needed the most. Some bosses have turned a blind eye to this initiative because they know it is the right thing to do but cannot risk their positions to openly support the change. As a result, they pretend not to see it and the effort is continuing.
Healthcare experts have acknowledged that minority communities in low-income areas are the hardest hit. Not only because of the volume of people, but because of an already broken system which does not offer access to care. As a result, these communities suffer many underlying health issues. Coronavirus paired with an underlying issue such as Diabetes, asthma and heart disease, which are prevalent in communities of color, create a perfect storm for Covid-19. Many people will die.
Here in Chicago, where only 30% of the people are black, 52% of positive Covid-19 cases are black people. A shocking 72% of those who have died are black.
But there is currently a movement led by those ignoring the hurdles and layers of bureaucracy to help and maximize access to care to help the most vulnerable. People are noticing and jumping on board and it is working.
We need to continue to spread awareness that we hold to power to make a change. We hold the knowledge and can decide to use it. We can all do our part by acknowledging a broken system and the desire to want more and do more.
—Hospital worker in Chicago, USA
Now Is the Time
When Macron became president of France, he went out of his way to insult working people. He called them illiterate, “the ones who are nothing” in contrast with his own class, “the first of all” (the ones who succeed). Now this contempt for the working people and the disregard for their lives are blatantly obvious.
For Boris Johnson (U.K.) and Bolsonaro (Brazil) the solution to the pandemic is to let millions of people die to acquire immunity for the rest of the population. In that way, they would reduce the monetary cost of treating and eradicating the virus.
As for the other rulers, they procrastinated as long as they could from taking necessary measures for fear of losing their profits. They created the current crisis, and these so called “risk-taking captains of industry” are showing themselves for what they really are. Useless. Dangerously useless. The only thing they are still capable of doing is lying to cover their incompetence and foolishness. With all their contacts and invaluable expertise supposedly worth millions of dollars, they cannot even get a factory to produce simple paper masks or swabs.
Who are really “the first of all” right now? The doctors, of course, but also the nurses, the cleaners, the truck drivers, the people who work in the warehouses, the cashiers. They go to work every day, often without protection, because they need the money, but also because it is their job and they do it willingly and with pride. Without them, everything would have stopped.
And the elite (as they think of themselves) could do nothing about it. They need the workers. We don’t need them. We can run the world because we know how to do it. We do it every day.
Yet as party members know too well, it is hard to convince workers to join our fight. Why?
Maybe one reason is that our friends lack confidence in other workers. They get discouraged. They think it is too difficult, not attainable. But look at the current situation. How quickly it happens. Who would have predicted it? Who is caught unprepared? Who is taking the lead and saving lives?
The doctors, the nurses who make ventilators out of diving masks when the profiteers sell them at exorbitant prices. Who gets together and sews masks when the politicians spent three months pretending they were not useful?
Who goes every day to the retirement home without a mask because there is no one else to take care of old people? The women Macron calls illiterate in order to justify their low wages and appalling working conditions. Who helped the old people in the French ghettos? The youth abandoned by a racist government. Who thinks of the homeless and helps them?
We do everything useful and of value to humanity. We take care of each other. They do nothing. They just shamelessly take.
Remember the communist anthem, the Internationale:
“We have been naught we shall be all.”
Now is the time.
—Comrade in Canada
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